We may all know Tiago Lemos as the king of pop, the street skater who can hit higher obstacles than anyone else. The biggest name in the game today is pro for Paul Rodriguez’s elite Primitive Skateboards and has his own signature New Balance shoe, but his story started somewhere very different indeed.

Born into poverty in the tiny town of Jaguariúna (it means river of the black jaguars in Portuguese), Tiago and his friends flew homemade kites and discovered skateboarding as a cheap way to stay out of trouble. From sleeping on the streets of one of the world’s most dangerous cities, to skating for 12 hours a day with no food, Tiago led a dreamer’s existence which relied on the kindness of friends and the balm of hope to keep his path in life headed toward a positive outcome.

In this episode of Skate Tales we dive into Tiago’s untold story—the underdog tale of a kid chasing something bigger—as Madars’s heads to Brazil to meet with Tiago’s childhood friends Kaue Cossa, Fabio Castilho, Sandro Sobral and Lucas Nascimento to learn how the biggest name in skateboarding today came up through the world’s most challenging skate scenes—and kept both his dreams, and their friendships, alive.