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.

I'm not saying my teachers should have rapped my lessons or anything, but I feel if I had made more of a connection to them I would have gotten more out of school.

Manual Lynn? Find out what that is. He wrote every single word in the play, and then everyone just rapped their parts. Imagine if like, Eminem wrote a play, that's what it sounded like to me.

I think it's helped me evolve all around, as an artist and as a person. I think we need something, need something to believe in. We need something that makes us pay attention to these humbling experiences.

Real dudes move in silence...like a mute drivin a new hybrid.

Imagine Eminem writing a play with complex raps and syllables, and melodies flowing in and out. That's what it was like for me listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda, it was incredible. So it just goes to show that if you put your teaching style in a certain form, that will attract the attention of the people you are trying to teach.

"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.