Billy Woods was born in Washington, D.C. His mother was an English literature professor from Jamaica. His father was a PhD, Marxist writer and thinker, active in the Zimbabwe War of Liberation and then member of the government in Zimbabwe. In 1980, the family moved to Africa. After the death of Woods' father, they returned to the United States in 1989. Woods briefly attended Howard University before getting involved in New York City's hip hop scene. He started making music in the late 1990s. He wrote his "first real rhyme" at a laundromat in Kennebunk, Maine in 1997.