That's one of the most important things to me is that Detroit and Ann Arbor got my back. If you don't have hometown love, then what's the point?

I don't want kids listening to my music thinking it's for their parents. I want them to feel it's theirs.

I'm trying to just drop so much music that people cannot ignore it.

I love doing things that people don't expect.

I really love rap music. I grew up in the '80s and '90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J - I'm a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships.

I think that what happens is that all of my modern influences blend together with the older soul influences and you get Mayer Hawthorne.

I was a hip-hop head. When I really found my own lane in music, it was hip-hop. I wanted to make hip-hop music. And I did, I made a lot of hip-hop music.