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.

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

Coming into this, making music, I knew that was something that was going to be held over my head. Okay we get it, you're openly gay, but do you know how to rap? Can you really rap and deliver? And I feel like I have that pressure put on me that other artists don't. A lot of people don't have to focus on being so lyrical and actually putting on shows. Before anyone was gonna tell me I was bad, I was gonna prove that I was good.

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 am a rapper. The reason why I was against the whole rapper title is because I know so many people who want to be rappers and they're not.

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.