Back in the day, founding member H. Michael "Mikey" King, was studying graphic art, photography and song writing. These interests proved useful during a friendship with a music composer in Hollywood's film industry. King began assisting with the writing process which later led to the undertaking of his own solo projects. Fast forward to Los Angeles 2004. King brought together members with a diverse range of musical and urban influences. Originally formed as Empire-Grand, the name was later shortened to "Empire-G". The debut album began as a couple of original songs burned on a CD as demo tracks. That CD was duplicated over and over as it got passed around from one person to another. Requests started getting back to King from people (known and unknown) hungry to hear more. In 2007, studio tracks were recorded for the debut album which generated a large amount of attention even in it's pre-production stage.