There are situations where I'm uncomfortable saying, "I'm a hip-hop artist." In some circles, the response is like, "Oh, OK, so... you have whores and your ties are shiny?"

When new artists come out and they're not being cosigned or some company doesn't have a stake in it, or someone's not getting paid under the table to produce the whole record or bring it to video, the artist really suffers.

Man, I would demand that artist come to the table with better variety. I would demand that musicians know music history, not just Hip-Hop, so that we could understand. The better your 'listening ear' is, the better your music will be.

You've rarely got an artist that's not being chauffeured into the business by some huge-ass names.

Having the savvy to know what you want to say, how you want to say it, and what music you want to say it over comes with time spent and wisdom gained in a music career.

It mattered what someone did to allow you to have the forum to do what you're doing.

Unless somebody who's already eleven thousand times platinum is like, "We're ushering this project in," it's not really gonna pop commercially.