I was kind of a weird kid in high school. I didn't have many friends in my age group because all they wanted to do was fight and have riots.
The prison industrial system, things like that are cleverly put in place to attempt to marginalize a certain group of people - and it's not only black, it's replete across the American society.
They say every five years the atoms in your body become a new set of atoms.
I'm from Victorville - it's about an hour-and-a-half away from Los Angeles, up in the desert. They call it Victimville because it's kind of violent. It's a beautiful place, though. It's quiet.
I think prejudice has gotten to a point where a lot of people hold biases in their mind and don't even realize that they're doing it, because it's deeply ingrained in the fabric of what it means to be an American.
I always knew I'd be an actor. I always knew I'd at least be on a big screen somewhere.
Although rap is about boasting, it's also about honesty and expressing your emotions.
I've been fortunate to get involved with 'Short Term 12.' I was just a young teenager on the Internet, clicking on anything that had the word 'actor' in it. One day, someone called me in for a movie audition.
I'm in this music duo called Moors.
We used to do sock puppet shows for my auntie back in the day. Me and my friends would do accents of Englishmen, and we would sip tea and act like we were rich in front of the family, and they thought it was just hilarious, the level of perception that we had about things that we'd never experienced.
Just listening and going back and forth and exchanging ideas with people. It's a beautiful thing. This is what's really important.
I grew up very poor in a fractured family that was dysfunctional on both sides, but I sort of put up these reflectors to most of the negative things that have occurred in my life. I don't carry around much baggage.
You can be the most intelligent person, and you can have so much potential, but if you don't have a guide by which to channel that energy, then a lot of times, it's futile.
That was like my safe place with great teachers where everyone could let down their guard and not feel judged. As soon as we walk outside, it was like, 'Look at these weird drama club kids.' But we all had our own agreement that we were cool in our own way.
It's been constant grinding and trying to secure work that I care about, tireless auditions and meetings. I've been fortunate that a lot of cool doors have opened to me, chiefly meeting great people who were inspired by what I've done and what they feel I could bring to their projects.
It's a hard thing when you've got guns pointed at you, to still stand up for what you believe in. Jimmie Lee and his family did that, and several others.
When I was little, when I was a toddler or something, I would watch 'Jason's Lyrica' lot.
I'm a little baby in a barrel just taking everything in. I'm just so fortunate to do whatever I'm doing.
Hip-hop is not all '2 Chainz' - although '2 Chainz' is awesome. How he does that with metaphors, I don't know.
When you're talking about an authority figure oppressing against people, it's the people that hold that authority figure up. If you want to get free of this bondage, then we need to think about ways to free ourselves rather than looking to the oppressors to free us.
