The idea of 'talking white,' a lot of people grew up around that, just the idea that if you speak with proper diction and come off as educated that it's not black and that it's actually anti-black and should be considered only something that white people would do.

One of the first times I ever performed in front of a big group of people was at my kindergarten graduation. I did, like, a Michael Jackson impersonation as, like, a five year old. I had the suit and blazer, the glove and the fedora, and I just performed a whole Michael Jackson song. I'm sure it was 'Smooth Criminal.

For me, performing is the biggest part of being a rapper. There's nothing like the feeling of screaming your story to people.

Kanye took me from a kid who listened to music to a kid who lived music.

To me, I feel like basketball and hip-hop have always been kinda conjoined because they're very similar in their competitive nature, you know what I'm sayin'? It's about technical skill, and then there's just God-given talent.

The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that.

I made the decision that I was going to make rap music in, like, fourth grade, so it's been something I was saying for a long time.