 Linzy was born in Clermont, Florida, to the late Samuel Avant, Sr., who was a farmer, and Constance Linzy, who struggled with schizophrenia and later drug addiction.Linzy was raised in Stuckey, Florida, in a close-knit rural community by his late grandmother Georgianna Linzy, a seamstress, who was also deaf, and also by his aunt Diane McMullen, an evangelist and domestic worker, and his uncle Isaiah McMullen, who was a minister, and is retired from the railroad.Linzy spent weekends and summers with his father, who lived a few miles away in Center Hill, Florida.