The difference is that they [Europeans] don't have that culture about hip-hop as a lifestyle, a way of life; for them it's more of the new trend, the new music that you have to like.

I've always liked fashion but maybe not to the point that I was so sick about it that I wanted to draw my own things.

I came to a point where I couldn't walk into an urban store and find anything I liked. Everything was just getting too baggy, everything was getting so over [priced]. It's as if what I wanted in street wear was nowhere in stores, with no disrespect to any hip-hop brands.

Everything goes so fast that you wake up suddenly after 5 years and you just feel like you want to talk about different [things] than everybody in the group, you want to talk about your own things.

You have a lot of educating to do hip-hop wise in Europe. When you tour, when you go out there, most of the people that come see you at the venue listen to a lot of different kinds of music, not only hip-hop; they're not heads. From time to time you're going to do a little concert in front of three or four hundred people that are only hip-hop heads and they're going to understand and know all about the gimmicks and the swagger but the rest of the people are just regular European people that listen to pop [or] rock & roll.

In North America, hip-hop and urban music are much more developed than it could be in Europe, except for a couple of markets like France, for example, or Germany, they're a little bit more aware.

I've always liked fashion, I've always made sure that I was dressed properly; the way I looked was always important to me.