Musician

When you're around somebody like E-40, all you can do is watch and learn, and soak up game.

Me personally, I'm real close to my mom. She raised me. It was a single-parent home situation. She did everything: cooked, worked two jobs, came home late, but she loved me to death.

Touring is starting to feel more like home than home does.

My friends put me on to Mobb Deep when I was a little kid. I've always been a big fan.

I think being a rock star is a little bit different than being an athlete or even a movie star.

I actually went to high school with Lil Uno.

My mom would always play me a lot of late-'50s, late-'60s rock.

I think it's natural for a creative to be sensitive. If I'm in the studio and I write something, I think it's the greatest thing in the world; it's like my baby. I just made something out of thin air that exists now in a tangible form. It's the biggest thrill in my life.

We used to approach a small 400-person show like an arena show, as if I was a star and I was coming out on stage in front of screaming people and that I was to be larger than life.

I've never been critically acclaimed. I've never been nominated for no Grammy. I've never been on no magazine cover. It's almost taboo to say I'm actually good.

Keeping in touch with the people that matter is important.

I don't want to be a small-time, independent, successful rapper.

Rapping was something I always wanted to do, so after school, my friends and I would catch the bus to my house and just sit there writing songs, every day.

What I actually do put much more weight on, in all honesty, is not being critically acclaimed - it's being respected by my OGs. When I talk to E-40 on the phone, every time I talk to him, I'm like, you know, if he tells me I'm doing good, I'm doing good.

I'm not on the radio all day long. I'm not on TV.

It's definitely been a long, long... long, long, long, long, long journey since I was selling burnt CD's out of my backpack in downtown Oakland.

For whatever reason, it's easier to perform in front of a massive crowd than in front of a small one, but again, that's how we came up.

'Downtown Love.' I made that with one of my homies in New Orleans. The story is tragic, and the song is emotional. It's my favorite. I'm most proud of that; it's such a creative piece.

I think my music is so personal that it lets people in. And they identify with me more because of that, you know, so it's like my story; it's who I am as a person.

Word of mouth is the most valuable form of marketing, but you can't buy it. You can only deliver it. And you have to really deliver.