I feel like your city - with hip hop in particular, because we're always beating our chest and shouting where we're from - your city is just as influential as your parents. Even the grimy, hardcore gangster rap from New York - KRS-One and Wu Tang, the stuff acknowledges it.

Music is not an exact science so depending on the time and the mode and the energy when we do it that will determine what happens with it.

The only way for me to be an artist is to be honest in my craft. If I veer from that, I'm not giving the investors what they want. Sometimes it's my job as an artist to know what I want to do, even when the fans tell me different.

God gave us music, so we play with our words.

I gotta be dope first. I gotta be appealing to your senses, and to what you like first. Then the message happens. Then you relate to the message.

There are staples to my show. I have to be conscious about switching things up because I know people who saw me last year will say, 'He did that last time.' But if certain things work, they work.

The responsibility of an artist is to be honest with themselves.