I started making music for fun maybe my senior year in college. I started rapping in high school, but it wasn't anything serious.

For you to be able to rap fast and fit many words into a bar, that's what rap is about, the showmanship. That's the thing we're kind of losing now. I'm not saying that the music now is horrible. I mean, I don't listen to it. The showmanship and creativity in rap is what made it special and what made it different.

I write a lot. I used to write a lot of poetry when I was younger, write for my school newspapers. Also reading is very important because you need to be on your word game if you want to be a lyricist.

Now I'm in the business and I do have to have these awkward conversations about how I look, how I talk. But I'm still here.

Living New York, everyone has a million hustles, so I was doing party promoting, working the doors at parties, doing that whole nightlife thing.

I don't think it was much of a forum for positive or negative feedback; it was mainly, "How can I make somebody laugh?" It wasn't a serious thing where I needed people to give me feedback.

I'm a SoundCloud, online kind of artist. It's not like back in the day when everyone was like linking up physically to do music. But with the album, I did have my first experience with meeting with a producer and us making things from scratch.