I'm only concerned with making music that I love and that my fans will respond to. I am happy to see other really good young artists able to flourish and pursue their careers.
I do all of marketing and promotion - it's the most exhaustive and rewarding part of the process and I wouldn't trade it for anything. The artist should be the person representing their brand because theyre the best person to do so.
I am a musician, a songwriter, music fan. I live in New York City and I love my job.
Bloggers are people too you rappers!
I think my music is born out of the music that I personally like to listen to. I love amazing singer-songwriters and diverse artists but it's important to know your strengths.
I am really obsessed with finding melodies that just hypnotize you and sink you into a song.
I've kind of shut myself off to a lot of new music because I don't want to be influenced by it.
I've basically been able to do everything, I basically run my own career and the decisions I make - whether it's how I'm gonna roll out music, how I'm gonna play on tours, different strategies for releasing and marketing things - and that comes from being college educated and someone who's interested in that side of the business rather than only the music. If anything I think that's where the biggest direct influence comes from.
There're always some notorious people in the crew who are doing crazy things, but I try to keep it a little more low-key. My crazy thing is always just the show and putting all my energy into it.
I think the craziest thing I've seen is probably a fan sleeping overnight for two nights before a show, which was probably a bit excessive - they still probably could have been first either way! But I guess it turned into a really exciting, sort of, camping-out trip for them so it was cool.
The cool thing about college tours is you make friends with a lot of other artists because the schools come in and they're looking to make a diverse grouping together and then it works out for everyone.
I guess this is cliche, but I'd love to work with Kanye West, Mark Ronson, Diplo.
People don't realize that there's no label and everything is self-financed and we make do and do our own thing. I was just happy to do my first video, I thought it was a fun experience.
Hoodie was just a nickname I had growing up and I just wanted to have a name that would stick in peoples' minds and be a little bit funny and representative of who I am.
I've been writing songs since I was 10 years old and always had a penchant for rhyming. I started listening to hip hop through my friends and fell in love with it.
The blogosphere gives me my life, I am fortunate to have developed relationships with great websites who allow me to reach a whole ton of new people everyday.
