Everything you write as an artist is about your legacy and your catalog and how you would look in a museum.
I used to be the class clown. I was the funny kid. That's why it was so hard for people to understand that I rap, because for a long time, they didn't take me seriously for who I was. By, like, eighth grade, I was really rapping.
One of my biggest fears with 'Coloring Book' was that it would be labeled. I hate labels. I never sought out for people to recognize it as a gospel album.
People always tell me I'm the complete opposite of Chief Keef and act like I'm supposed to stop him from making his music. But I like Chief Keef, so it's always super awkward. I just make music I like.
We've been conditioned to understand music as a field where you get discovered, and you're always trying to find that end. So 'my shot' is speaking of a variety of shots. When you're a rapper, you look at every shot as the one you're supposed to take.
I think politics is a reason why a lot of stuff doesn't get done. There's a lot of favors, and a lot of people are held back by their intentions of being re-elected or the things that they owe their party or constituents.
There's always been a quiet conversation and joke that if you're not hard, if you're not from impoverished neighborhoods, if you're not certain constructs of a black stereotype, then you not black.
I think it's so dope that I'm here in Chicago and contributing to the music scene that's thriving. People are so happy Chicago's shining that everyone is willing to say 'I represent Chicago.' That wasn't always the case.
I would largely attribute my identity - as it relates to music labels and corporate music giants - to Dave Chappelle and his relationship to and firm standing in Hollywood.
There's so much positivity in the world and your day-to-day life that to go as far as to say that you hate something or you wish it didn't exist and all the bad things in the world happen to you and only you, it's a joke. It's not real to have that much hate in your heart.
My daughter, when she was still in utero, she had, they call it atrial flutters. It's kind of like an irregular heartbeat. But when you're in utero, it's real hard to detect and also to treat.
When you become a parent, you start loving diapers.
The idea of 'talking white,' a lot of people grew up around that, just the idea that if you speak with proper diction and come off as educated that it's not black and that it's actually anti-black and should be considered only something that white people would do.
I don't really like meetings, I like recording and performing music. I need to set myself up for when the time does come that I need better distribution or just a bigger team behind me.
Taylor Swift is just dope. She is an ill songwriter.
People wanna say that they're part Native American or mixed, or anything other than black. We're raised to believe that there's something better about not being fully black, something eccentric about it. I'm saying I used to tell girls that I was mixed, which is a bold-faced lie!
I've never met Eminem; you don't meet Eminem. He has his own secret service.
I had already been making music for my whole high school life, and '10 Day,' which took me a whole year to finish, was about working with a lot of different producers and learning all of the aspects about being a rapper, from shows to recording to studio etiquette to marketing.
There's a larger conversation we need to have about the role of police officers, their relationship to the people as enemy or executioner, when they're not supposed to be either.
When I found Freestyle Fellowship, I started getting into the construction of rap. You get better at it the more you do it; you figure out the science and the math behind it.