As a writer, you have a huge ego. You think that every line means something to everybody the same way it means to you. And that's not true.

The fundamentals of hip-hop still play an important role, cause it's about those similes, those metaphors, those parallels. And to some people it's just about, "Man, I'm really relating to the lifestyle."

To me it's just the knock, man. It's the knock and the groove of the beat. When I start a song, it's the first thought. It's the first thought and the first cadence, because that's the most natural. You know what I'm saying? I feel like people can feel when something is natural.

I was going through a time where I was like man I wanted all of my clothes to be totally understated and I would do pop color with hats from a line called Ale et Ange out of New york City. They created all these hats and I just thought they were super fresh and the only way that I could really get them across...I was just like, 'Let me make everything mute and just put on the hat.'

If you had two pair of jeans, four shirts, you were cool if you had a couple pair of kicks that were fresh. That was it. That's how it started.

I don't think anything I've done with Adidas has been shifted. It's been part of the Pusha T brand, has for sure been organic and natural.

No one wants to hear me over some smooth, regular beat, or just into the times. I try to do records sometimes that have a different bounce - maybe it's a Southern bounce or something. And people shoot me all day long.