I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.
Someone once asked, 'What is the difference between me and Saddam Hussein?' The answer is, 'I have a conscience and he doesn't.'
It would take me three or four lifetimes to do everything I want. I'm a Brooklyn boy who learned to hustle, and I have to do something every day or I get the guilties.
I started hustling at 12, my mother hustled ahead of me. I was only allowed to because they knew me.
I didn't have accessories when I started my career. Did you see me wearing bling-bling when I did 'Hola at Your Boi?' No! I hustled to get money to buy them, and there is no crime if I show it or flaunt it to my fans because they gave me money to buy them.
Producing suits me because I have a business mind and a business sensibility. I was a street hustler. I did whatever it took. I sold whatever I could sell. I'm a good organiser.
I'm not a hustler. I don't pitch songs. I don't ask people to write with me. It's not what I do.
I could never drive in a great big car; people like me because I'm a man of the people, a hustler.
After school, I'd wait for someone to pick me up and no one would, so I'd be like, 'I guess I'll walk home.' I had to be a hustler, because nobody did anything for me.
When I first went to work... I had over me an impetuous, hustling man. It was necessary for me to be up to the top notch to give satisfaction. I worked faster than I otherwise would have done, and to him I attribute the impetus that I acquired.
I walk around - people know who I am. I've got friends. I can make ends meet. I grew up around people who have been hustling from the start, so I think I've got a bright little future ahead of me - especially if I don't fight. Why would I want to go out there and fight with somebody, get my face punched and kicked. It's not my idea of a good time.
The simple facts of Chadian life - what it takes to survive in that kind of climate with nothing but a hut and some animals - stunned me. And this made me realize, perhaps for the first time, how easy my life was compared to those of people in less privileged societies.
I started out doing commercials, like Diet Coke and Pizza Hut. And I started to find there was a different life for me, in a different field. From there, I got a call from a director in Italy, and we did 'Indio' I and II, and that's where it started.
I'm a hip-hop head, but hip-hop actually introduced me to other genres of music because I started to wonder where a lot of these samples came from. So I fell in love with Bobby Womack or Willie Hutch because I wanted to know where those samples came from.
There are two kinds of people: Those who like active vacations and those who like sedentary vacations. I'm one of the weird hybrids who likes both. That makes me, I suppose, the Jekyll and Hyde of holidayers.
My two main trainers were John Dahmer and DJ Hyde. DJ Hyde mainly taught me how to be tough: I mean, the beatings that he used to give the students as far as wrestling initiations go were as tough as they come, and I'm thankful for it.
Boxing was a way to express my anger. All of a sudden, I was expressing anger, and I was good at it. I was like a Jekyll and Hyde. Boxing helped me because I was fighting the anger out. I was knocking guys out.
I used to be very much Jekyll-and-Hyde, where the Jekyll in me would say, 'Keep to the budget, be responsible,' and Hyde would be like ,'Ah, we can do an extra shot or an extra day.'
As an actor, the second and last ones were interesting for me. Because those parts had the most change in playing someone who was both light and dark, sort of Jekyl and Hyde.
I have had my eyes opened to a different side to me. I'm a much happier person. There was always this Jekyll and Hyde thing with me.
