Happened in two phases:
Phase 1: I came up in Detroit. Around '88 Techno and House was huge and in Detroit we had a DJ on the radio named "The Wizard" that had mix shows on WJLB in the evenings that were incredibly popular, spinning house, techno, hip hop, funk, and whatnot. I wanted to DJ and a couple of years later I was taught how to spin by one of Detroit's other big name DJ's on the radio. With this came a want to learn how to make Techno. I had an Atari ST computer back then and I picked up a copy of Steinberg Pro 24 (the predecessor of Cubase) and borrowed my uncle's Alesis HR-16B drum machine and got into it.
Phase 2: Around 1991 I decided to start writing rhymes thanks to a love of hip hop enhanced by my time behind the decks, learning to juggle breaks and spittin lil rhymes over 'em. One of my boys started writing with me and we decided to make a rap duo out of it. In 'early 92 we took a drive up to my uncle's crib in Bay City, Mi to see if he could make some beats for us with some sample material I brought with me. The process intrigued me enough that I figured I'd try my hand at making hip hop beats. One of my boys had a couple of cousins that wanted to rap too, and his other cousin was a musician so my boy's dad invested about $10K-20K in a pair of Alesis ADAT's, a 24 channel Tascam board, an MPC 60mkII, rack mounted ASR-10, Yamaha W7, and mics and effects processors and stuck it in his office building as a recording studio. Every now and then I would swing by to chop it up, make a beat, and spit rhymes. Eventually I picked up a few cheap pieces of equipment and started making my own shit alongside the Techno I was also making.