The Flavor Unit is a crew of emcees and DJs from New York City and Northern New Jersey. It is now known as the Unit. The original version of the crew centered on producer the 45 King. It was Mark's connections to radio personalities DJ Red Alert and DJ Chuck Chillout that initially got the crew noticed, but the original members also all had formidable rhyme skills and wrote streetwise lyrics. The 45 King eventually fell into serious drug abuse and Queen Latifah took over the name; it became her umbrella organization. Flavor Unit Management is run by Latifah, one of the original members of the Flavor Unit, and Shakim Compere. Past management clients were Monica, Outkast, Faith Evans, Total, SWV, Almighty RSO (a group featuring Ray Dog, better known today as Benzino), Groove Theory, Monifah, Gina Thompson, LL Cool J, Zhané, Donell Jones, and Naughty By Nature.
