Litefoot was born Gary Paul Davis in Upland, California. He was raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, although of Chichimeca (northern Mexican indigenous) ancestry. He has lived in Seattle, Washington since 1997. Litefoot was the first Native American to perform rap music,[citation needed] calling his style of hip hop "tribalistic funk." As the popularity of rap music has spread throughout American Indian reservations