I signal with an independent label, Continuum. After that I put out a totally independent record, sold fourteen thousand of them from my basement, bought a house, started raising my kid, made a decent living.

Of course I want people to show up to the concerts and I am sure for that to decline would be a difficult thing.

I remember coming home from school one time and saying very calmly to my mum, 'I'm not going any more. It's a waste of time. I gotta get going with this music thing. School's getting in the way.' It freaked her out.

A common man, even like myself, I don't know how to pay my taxes.

I'm in awe of people like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard; they're great musicians and people. But I'm most starstruck by people in the small town where I live. Especially single dads, like me, who are working five times as hard to raise their kids.

On a scale of the United States, the Hollywood influence on what comes out, that's not the majority views of across the country. What we read in Us Weekly or People magazine, or Entertainment Tonight, it's not what the majority of the country is thinking.

And now that Martina McBride knows of T.I., and T.I. knows of Martina McBride, that made me very happy, too. It's introducing worlds to different people and bringing them together with a song.