I mostly write to music, even though I know I sound free-form a lot. Then there are times when I'll have a concept and hold on to it until I come across the right music that makes a marriage.

You have to understand the vehicle, the form that allows you to do what you do, and why that is.

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?"

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

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.

I mostly write to music, even though I know I sound free-form a lot. Then there are times when I'll have a concept and hold on to it until I come across the right music that makes a marriage.

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