I like to consider myself a student of hip hop. There's a certain level of certification and wit and craftsmanship that comes with rapping. As rap progresses - it's a young genre - it's becoming way more mainstream, crossing over to different lanes. I feel like it's losing its essence in a way, because it's getting commercialised. I want to keep it fresh and keep it progressive, but I also want to respect the foundation of what rap is about.

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

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.

I didn't choose to be a rapper; it's just my talent.

I think it's very important that LGBT narratives are spoken from LGBT perspectives. I think that what I do is important as far as creating a lane for myself to be independent.

I'm a lot different in my career since that interview. To have someone like Diplo tweet "Cakes' album is really cool" is cool, but in the same breath I still like what I do without anyone's approval. It's still good music.

I don't know [whether] if I didn't get paid, or my career didn't keep going where it goes, if I would keep doing music.