Big Sean could get on a verse with anybody and probably annihilate them.
I really like blending two things together that are polar opposites. Because I feel like, in a large aspect, that's kinda like what I am.
I just like blending all the genres together but blending them up in a good way. I try to be as free as I can with it.
People called me sharktooth, Dracula. I got made fun of so much cause I couldn't afford braces.
If I was a spy, I would have a watch that would cloak me in invisibility.
'Beautiful Loser' had a lot of great records. It had a lot of really heartfelt songs on there. But I felt, at the time, it didn't have it's own cohesive sound.
When you're the cool guy, you don't know how to take people not liking you. I've already been there, done that.
All I can do with my music is try and be a light for people who are in a dark time.
I always been writing songs since I was, like, six. I was listening to Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Frankie Laine and people like that. I was just in the backyard writing songs.
I felt like I related to East Coast lyricism a little more. Because I couldn't be super gangsta.
I'm a drama kid at heart. That is definitely where my heart and soul is. I did 'Hairspray' in high school - I was Seaweed.
The most powerful, most insightful, and most important part of my music is honesty and inclusiveness with my fans - giving them as deep a story as I can give them.
I look at old performers like James Brown: back in the day when you actually had to work hard to get poppin'. I look at all those types of performers. Even like Kid n' Play and the Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff and Salt-N-Pepa. That era where they had to perform. You couldn't just rap. It had to be an entire performance.
Kodak is hard. 'No Flockin' is an amazing song.
Mike Tyson and Kool G Rap had lisps - lisps always been cool!
Shooting a music video sometimes can be a job.
Randomly enough, all of my favorite rappers growing up were East Coast rappers. I don't know. I just related to them a little more at first - because if you're born in L.A., and you lived there your whole life, Snoop Dogg literally sounds like cars driving by. You feel me? You hear Snoop Dogg so much.
That was everything to me as a kid. When I'd see someone on MTV, it was like, 'Wow, they're the real deal.'
It's important to reassure people that everything is going to be all right.
We really have the power to illuminate all negative things in our life, but we have to find that light source inside of us and really tap in with it and reconnect with it.
