As an artist, it's so important to create music that puts a chill through your body or does something to make you feel good. I think my album has a little bit of everything in it and that's important to me.

I love the energy that comes when I get on the mic. It keeps me creative and I love to hear what the fans want, what they love or hate about it.

The main thing I look at is: Is it from the heart? If I know that you down with me, then we always gonna be down through whatever the thick and thin.

It's true, the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang, could be dangerous.

I always write to the moment. I've always been that kind of emcee. I don't wanna come in with all the paperwork and all o' that or whatever. That's good when you just an emcee from off the block that really don't have to work as hard as the next man. But when, you know... Y'all make me write like this, from, I guess, me makin' a classic and everybody callin' my stuff classic material - that makes me have to work ten times harder. But a lot o' times things just happen at the moment for me: spur o' the moment. That's just how it goes sometimes.

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'.

You know the things I went through as a youngster, coming into the business, all the good, the bad and the ugly that came. I'd had a rough life. I grew up single parent. My mom, she was like a father to me.