When you have something on your mind that you really have coming out of your brain... just talking to the beat, it's pretty easy and it's a natural feeling and at this point in my career. That's what I'm going for, I just want things to be organic.

I was probably just graduating high school, maybe still in high school. When I was still in high school, maybe the last two years, I was rapping but I wasn't telling anybody. When I signed my deal people didn't know it was the same Ryan Montgomery from Oak Park High School, because I used to play basketball and I used to fight. Like I'd bring boxing gloves to school. So when they found out, it was, "You mean Ryan who be boxing?" or, "Ryan who be hopping up at the park?" So I was known as that guy.

"Tabernacle" was probably the easiest song I'd ever wrote because all I really had to do was rhyme the words since the whole story, front to back, was already in my head. All I needed to do was verbalize it, and if it didn't have to rhyme I could've just freestyled it because I already knew what I wanted to say.

People also knew me for putting people up to hip-hop, so people knew I was heavy into hip-hop. But as for cyphers and stuff in high school, I would never get on it because I was too shy. That's pretty much what I was doing.

I think everyone has spiritual encounters and feelings but I don't think everyone chooses to acknowledge them.

Something that I can say, "I set out to do this, however many years ago, and now I did it." That's a new thing of mine too, is just speaking things into existence.

It's just an inspiring journey in itself to stop drinking this late in my career after abusing alcohol and to have this kind of success so late when usually people give you like this window of success time.