A chance meeting at the Pompano Beach Club led to a music distribution deal with a US rap artist for a young Bermudian entrepreneur.

McCal Roberts, the owner of Mac10 Records, who works as a waiter at the Southampton hotel, met rapper Doctor Ice when he was staying there on holiday.

After their initial meeting turned into a friendship, Mr. Roberts has ended up with a deal to produce and distribute two compact disc singles for several US states.

Doctor Ice rose to prominence in the mid-80s with the hip-hop group UTFO, whose best-known hit was ?Roxanne, Roxanne?. He has since broken away from the band and is now working on a solo album.

?Doc Ice and his wife were staying at the hotel, but I had no idea he was a rapper,? Mr. Roberts said. ?We got talking and when I told him I do videos, he asked me if I could take some film of him in Bermuda.

?I spent a day with him, travelling around on the bike and shopping. I burned it onto a DVD and gave it to him. He said it was a nice thing I did for them.?

It was only some time later, when Mr. Roberts was watching television and saw Doctor Ice performing with UTFO that he realised who his new friend was.

?I called him up and asked if he was the guy with UTFO and he said, yes, that was him and he was still doing some rapping,? Mr. Roberts said. ?I said maybe I could help him with something. He said that might be possible, if he set up his own independent record label.?

Last year, Doctor Ice established LymeLyte Entertainment. Once free from his deals with Sony Records (with UTFO) and Jive Records, the artist was able to distribute his own music ? and he hired Mr. Roberts to do some of it for him.

Mr. Roberts works closely with LymeLyte?s marketing team and sends out hundreds of CDs burned to order on his copier.

?Doctor Ice sends me files over the internet of different elements, such as the instrumental file and the vocals file, which needs to be remastered and put together,? Mr. Roberts said.

?Then, if the marketing team says ?we need 500 CDs in New Jersey?, I produce them on my copier and send them out on a Federal Express account. So far, I?ve sent CDs out to California, New York and New Jersey.

?My machine can burn seven discs at a time and about 100 per hour. So far, I?ve only been asked for a few hundred here and there, but if this gets successful, I?ll need to get a bigger machine that can burn 30 discs at a time.?

The CD-ROM he is distributing at the moment includes the tracks ?DJ?s Raw Hit? and ?Sandy?. When Brooklyn-based Doctor Ice completes his album, Mr. Roberts hopes to be involved in the distribution of that too.

?It?s a privilege to work with Doc Ice,? Mr. Roberts said. ?He?s an old school hip-hop artist, who sings about life, not about guns and drugs like so many of the modern rappers.

?Maybe there will be a trend of a more positive kind of hip-hop in the future ? and I?d like to play a part in making that happen.?

Mr. Roberts operates two other business ventures. One is McCal Video Productions, which involves him filming all manner of sporting, community and school events. He converts his footage into DVDs, VHS videos or CD-ROMs, which are offered for sale.

A second business, Mac10 Entertainment, specialises in online streaming, artist production and artist management. Mr. Roberts is based in Bailey?s Bay.