It's in the American spirit to take advantage of an opportunity.
I always want everything I do to be somewhat cinematic. I don't want to be the rapper that'll just post up and shoot a video anywhere with no real meaning to it.
I had a nightmare that I was mopping floors and that this Freddie Gibbs thing was all a dream.
There's some dudes that did Gangsta Grillz tapes who probably weren't worthy of it - their label just put up the bread, or they did a favor.
I just want to put my stamp on all kinds of music. Everything I do is going to be gangsta rap, street-based, street-oriented.
I wanted to be a gangsta from birth, not because of the music but moreso what I was seeing, what my uncles were doing. I was just fascinated with the street lifestyle from a young age.
Probably dancing to Cassie's 'Me & U' - That's my guilty pleasure.
I started hustling in early adolescence.
Gary is a really impoverished town; it's in industrial decay. There's low employment and things of that nature.
I tried to watch 'Inception,' but I fell asleep.
My TV stays locked at 'SportsCenter.' That and 'Pardon the Interruption.'
Every project might only sell like 30 to 50,000, but I mean, I'm getting seven, eight dollars every CD. I make more money per record than an artist on a major label - I can definitely say that.
Gary is a old factory town right outside Chicago. From my standpoint, my family migrated there in the '50s and '60s from Mississippi - Sardis, Mississippi - shout out to Sardis, Mississippi. My family migrated there just like a lot of black families in that area: they migrated there to get jobs, to get those factory jobs, that steel mill job.
I'm from Gary, Indiana, and everybody's damn near at the poverty level. It's a rough city to grow up in, and it's a modern-day ghost town.
He's been my number one influence. If you say Tupac didn't influence you, then you don't really need to be rapping because nobody evokes that kind of emotion on a track like Tupac does.
Nobody else was saying what he said on air, and sometimes he pushed the envelope when he said the newest Jay Z line with a Michael Jordan highlight. But Stuart Scott was an artist.
I remember I used to go school with guys who couldn't afford notebooks, pens, paper: the necessary tools needed in order to survive in school. It's a lot of kids in Gary who are at a disadvantage without that.
I look at some of my fans at my show, and a lot of them look like they're straight out of a punk rock show. They like what I'm coming across with. I had seen them same thing when I went to this Scarface show, so it lets me know that I'm on the right track.
Stuart Scott was a hero.
My mom had me at a young age, like 20, and she was the oldest child. All her brothers were seven and 10, so I was like a younger brother more so than the oldest child. I was the younger brother to all my uncles, so they were going through their childhood and their teenage years, and I was right there.
