Well, the first thing I do is I try to listen to whatever rapping is already on the track. I listen for cadence and melody to see how the track's already been written, and to make sure that whatever flow or flows I decide to run with, or patterns or melodies that I decide to put into the song, that they're not already in there. Then I try to see if there's a different part of the subject matter that I can talk about.

Ennio Morricone is royalty. He doesn't really do this a lot and Quentin brought him back [in Hateful Eight]. Quentin [Tarantino] basically went back and made his The Good, The Bad and The Ugly-kind of film, the ultimate epic spaghetti western, and then you've got mister spaghetti western himself scoring your movie. It's gonna be hard to not vote for him in a landslide. Probably the easiest win of the night.

It had no affect on me whatsoever. Um... I consider Jay a very good friend of mine. I also consider Dame and Biggs very good friends of mine. With me not being a Roc-A-Fella artist, with me just being a friend of both and not being tied to them in the Roc-A-Fella situation, I was still able to maintain personal relationships with both of em.

I don't make my music for just me or a few people. Hopefully everybody that makes music wants to be embraced by the people they tryna make it for, you know what I'm saying. It's just a matter of time before everybody gets the message that I'm tryna send out.

Well I think the problem is, is that...what people don't realize is they're gonna get away from the people that they're marketing with now. They're tryna change everything about the format of the NBA, the imaging and everything. This is more about control you know what I'm saying? This has nothing to do with clothing. This is a control issue.

I think as he gets older, Quentin [Tarantino] is growing more and more into his directorial side, but the writer in him won't stop the pen. I don't think he deserved a directing nod. Like I said, it's beautifully shot - it's cinematography, obviously, deserves a nomination - but he's not the camera man.

This is a very pivotal time in America and I think families are still reeling from events depicted in that movie [The Big Short ].