I consider myself a genius because, when you talk about anything and everything, you a genius to me. It's just about makin' it fire on top o' more fire.

I'm not an artist that makes singles, I'm an artist that makes albums, and it's a totally different thing.

In the early 2000s, I was going through a lot. I didn't have my head screwed on right. Where I was at as a man, I was still growing up.

The most important thing is just to be recognised as a legend, like the people call me. To have that title attached to your name, you've got to be a bad man. It's an honour to have that role.

In order to be one of the greats, you've got to study the greats.

Before I think we was emcees, we was more or less narrators too. Because if you look at the early '80s hip hop, it was so much creativity goin' on with artists like then, like Slick Rick, then you had Rakim, and you had these different kind of artists back then. And we was a marble cake of all these artists. So I didn't have a problem with writin' stories because I felt like that was somethin' I loved to do. Even to this day, I really consider myself an entertainer-slash-narrator. I like to talk about stuff that goes on.

Sometimes you can make a substantial amount of money and automatically think that you've made it, that you did everything you wanted to do. Some people just stop.