When you're sober it's easier to stay in line with your train of thought. There's a lot more you're thinking about that you want to discuss, and there are a lot more memories that you're dealing with that you had pent up inside of you for so long because you had been drinking all of those years.

I didn't set out like, "I'm gonna do this album, and I really want a #1 album." So it wasn't even on my mind like a goal to accomplish... but as soon as it sunk it that it was an accomplishment, I realized I gotta start acknowledging milestones [I've] accomplished because sometimes you get so caught up in the bigger picture that you gotta stop and notice the steps you take to get to the bigger picture.

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.

It's not about going to church every week because you know there's a lot of people who go to church all of the time who aren't going to heaven. It's not even about that, it's not about kissing God's ass, it's about being aware.

The Lord givith and the Lord takith away. I was given a lot of signs from the universe and looking at it in retrospect made me feel like God was telling me I needed to follow my dream. My granny getting in that car accident and being at that hospital when I was going there to see my girl... that whole part of the story where I go to the show and come back to the hospital... and it was almost like as soon as I found out that my granny didn't make it as soon as I got back, I also found out that my son had just come out.

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 still wanted to get into the NBA. I was still on the team, I was a starting point guard and I was on and off the team because of my grades. That was the thing, discipline, discipline, discipline, and then I was going home to a very strict dad. He ran the house like the military.