I know a lot of people connect with my story. Every night that I do shows, I get emails and texts and tweets about how my life story has helped change other people's lives. With my sobriety and what I went through. I don't do a whole bunch of songs, that from start to end talk about one particular thing. That's a missing puzzle.

Say an A&R person wants me to do this type of song because they feel it is going to work on the radio, I guarantee you that unless the song is real, there is nothing wrong with having success and I want to be successful. That is why I am, but I do it my own way.

I know a lot of people connect with my story. Every night that I do shows, I get emails and texts and tweets about how my life story has helped change other people's lives. With my sobriety and what I went through. I don't do a whole bunch of songs, that from start to end talk about one particular thing. That's a missing puzzle.

You have to understand for my whole life I have been romanticized by this other side of the fence. This whole darker, egotistically, sort of mean world. I fully embraced that world and three or four years ago I completely walked away from that world, literally.

To me it's very important to be a leader not a follower. Sometimes it takes balls and heart to do that. Sometimes it's not that east to say.

They look at me and say how come you're winning? You came back from the dead three years ago, and you're already killing it. I mean I came back from the dead. Thanks to my family and thanks to Kevin Zinger and my brother Evidence and Rocko, especially my blood family and the guys in Swollen Members. I wouldn't even be here today if it wasn't for those people.

My music is very edgy and the energy is very raw, but I am also getting out this positive message without being a teacher. I don't want to hear anybody preach or teach things to me, especially when I was a kid. But there are messages that people are grabbing onto without me even realizing that they are messages.