When I sit here and see that the eight brothers from the neighborhood that I grew up with still have success, it had to be magical.

I don't have one track that I consider better than the next because all I'm trying to do is still grow as an artist.

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.

I think there are a lot of dudes out there that are runnin' out of gas. Some of my favourites, even ones I look up to... I haven't been fully impressed with their dynamics of makin' a body of work that makes sense to me.

When you grow up in that environment of drugs and guns and people gettin' hurt, it start to reflect your background. And I think, at that time when I was doin' it, that's all I knew. But as I got older in the business, I stopped bein' involved with that, and I started to look at the world. And I said, 'Yo, I wanna start talkin' about everything that goes on in the world. I don't wanna just limit myself to one style'.

Call me the rap assassinator / rhymes rugged and built like Schwarzenegger

It's important to have a spiritual side because tomorrow's no promise to us. We have to pay homage to our saviour and put him in our life more because, without him, you don't know where you're going to go.