I've been combing through the Wolverine archives and advertisements from the sixties and seventies. I'm looking to take inspiration from designs of the past and bring them into the future.
So whether that's taking a bunch of people from Chicago down to Standing Rock or being in Flint, Michigan, or being in Palestine or Baton Rouge after Alton Sterling's killing, I've been trying to, just as a man, be present and stand with the struggling and oppressed people around the world.
I had white family members, black family members, white friends, black friends by the time I was 16.
I have a responsibility to my fellow my community, to my fellow man, and woman. With that said, I create from a place of selfishness, but I'm also cognizant of potential impact on others. And I try to make that impact positive.
I collaborated with so many people from Chicago - so many Black people, young Black women organizations like BYP100 and Assata's Daughters. Just being out there, I saw what a community mobilizing can accomplish in terms of freedom and how music and my words in my music can play a significant part in that.
By nature I can be a confrontational person. I don't feel like there's anything wrong with that.
My mother was from upstate New York; she's of Irish and German descent. My father was from Ghana.
I just like Kodak Black. I feel like he's pretty self-aware, even if I don't agree with all the things he says.
We're not able to hide behind myths of this being a post-racial society because Donald Trump has outlined exactly how a large portion of America feels.
Chicago, I feel, is a microcosm for the segregated, violent environment that is America. I try to not only speak about these things in music, but also try to address these things in real life tangibly with action.
I came from a two-parent household and my father is a PhD from west Africa, but at the same time I grew up five blocks from where Obama lived and five blocks from the projects.
LA is the only place where people know my name and still walk up to me and ask it. And I think that was really representative of a lot of the transplant people in LA. I just found everything so phoney.
That's one thing I can't lose: I can't lose the realness in my music.
A lot of the most prolific painters died broke and weren't appreciated in their time. I'm trying to remember who exactly I was thinking of - like Rembrandt, van Gogh or Gauguin. Some of those guys, they got whole floors of museums to themselves but weren't really appreciated in their time at all.
That's something I can never lose: my love for the art of rap. As I grew older and became more interested in song writing, it just pushed my possibilities further. I always have to have a foot firmly on the floor as a rapper, because that's how I started.
I used to print out lyrics from Nas songs and write my own lyrics in the same syllable count but with different words and different rhymes.
From a musical standpoint, I was inspired by '90s hip hop, with a lot of drums and the tempos. I'm always inspired by David Bowie and Prince.
I wanted to go to a place with my first album that was just to the root, to the heart of emotion, and just unbridled by anything that wasn't truly in my heart.
I think that everybody has their own interpretations of what it means to be American. But from my vantage point, being black and successful in the Unites States of America is the epitome of being American.
My purpose is to unite people, to bring us together. And above all, to be a champion for justice and a vehement opponent of oppression and justice.
