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.

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 ever want anyone to hear my music and look at it as just gratuitous violence, or hustling and money-getting - I try to tell the perspective of the woman, the man, the mind, why.

Of course fashion is definitely playing a part.

For me, I was born in the Bronx, and I moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia at a very young age. I had the luxury of going back to New York, visiting my grandmother who would spoil me endlessly, and I could buy whatever was the hot kicks in the summertime of 1990. Being able to shop and then going back to Virginia Beach, where they weren't as fast in regards to fashion, I had that luxury.

I've never been - I don't think I'm, like, a great A&R, by any means. I don't even know production lingo, in all honesty.

When I think back to my influences and icons musically, they were my icons musically because, for example, I would look at Rakim and be like man he said the freshest things and then I look at him and he would have on the pair of Nikes that I wanted and I'm like, "ma' please!" It was everything. Now, I sort of feel like if you are fresh then your music doesn't have to be that good because people are so keyed into the fashion. That's just the times I guess.