Musician

I remember, when I was ten, I wanted to look like Em. I had the bleached blonde hair.

Some people will like it. Some people will hate it. Some people are indifferent. And you have to live with that as an artist. You wanna be appreciated, you wanna be liked, but you know, it's just not realistic for everyone.

I see myself as a hip-hop artist, but I never wanted to make music for a specifically white audience. That's not what I grew up around.

There's only so much you can do on a physical level trying to tour or pass out mixtapes. Although that matters, I realized that you can reach more people putting your music on Soundcloud and networking with blogs to write about you. It really comes back to the music and what you release.

I've dreamed of being on the road, traveling and touring, for as long as I've been into doing music. It's what I live for. I just wanna be Willie Nelson.

I always thought that one day I would be somebody. I would be successful in music, and I would have fans that cared about my music. At the same time, I really feel like an ordinary guy; I have been an ordinary guy forever.

That's the nature of this business. Something that took ten years to make can crumble in an instant. It could be snatched away from you at any moment.

It was inspiring to see local legends like E-40 and Keak da Sneak break out with 'Tell Me When to Go.'

London, from the architecture to the culture to the fashion to the accents, feels like it's a special place.

I got my start in small dive bars in New Orleans.

I grew up watching Kobe Bryant.

If we're deciding about merch pieces, t-shirts or hats, they have to be well designed and cool enough for somebody to want to buy it and then wear it and walk around advertising me and my music.

If you're not out living, then you've got nothing to talk about.

It's our approach to treat each show like an arena show. We over-invest in production to make the stage look bigger, turning the show into an experience and not just somebody standing around with a microphone rapping.

'Runaround Sue' was a big record for me, as well as the music video for it.

You don't need mainstream media outlets, the big TV looks, or the magazine covers.

I love being in a room in front of an audience who cares about the music, who knows the music, and who has lived with the music. It's kind of like an experience you share. I'm on stage performing it, but they're singing the words, too.

My music is very reminiscent of the sound I grew up on and the place where that happened. It's a combination of everything I'm inspired by.

It's just crazy to look back at what I was wearing in high school.

I think, back in the day, when I was first starting to make music, all I wanted to do was to get a record deal.