My thing is that I don't give no person that much power over my path that I'm walking. Not one person can make or break what I'm doing, except me or God.
On a mission your worst enemy is idle time.
Luck is just bein' prepared at all times, so when the door opens you're ready.
I'm more focused on giving solutions and inspiration more than anything.
We're not the cause, we're the effect.
Money is a tool – it’s the means, not the end. Inspiration is the metric that dictates whether or not a project is a success. It’s more realistic than trying to aim for radio play, or trying to satisfy an AR, or the other gatekeepers on these platforms. I don’t even know how to create with those things in mind. But if you tell me the goal is to inspire? That makes my job a lot easier.
I feel that luck is a product of hard work.
All the smart money got they bets on me / And all the real niggas wish the best for me
And it's possible to monetize your art without compromising the integrity of it for commerce.
If you don't know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it's kind of hard to put things together.
I kinda came into my manhood, or what I thought was my adulthood, early. I had to show up, and I had to make sure I had gas money, food money, rent money, clothes money - everything was on me, startin' at that age, so that's what led me to start hustlin', that's what led me to start to try to find ways to fend for myself. And once I did that, I was full-time, bein' in the street, and, bein' in the street, it's cold. It's the way the streets operate, and you have to adapt to that.
When I became a man, and I started to understand the difference between the truth and what your parents are supposed to tell you, there's a difference, know what I mean?
As gang members, as young dudes in the streets, especially in L.A., we're the effect of a situation. We didn't wake up and create our own mindstate and our environment; we adapted our survival instincts.
If you 35, 28, or 30 years old, and you decide you're gonna pick up a rag and start bangin', and you can look yourself in the mirror and you still feel like you're a man? That's cool, do your thing.
Your parents are supposed to tell you to make decisions that are gonna help you and that'll have a positive effect on your life and your well-being.
If you're a real hip-hop fan and a real street music fan, and you just love good music, you're gonna play it from top to bottom, and you're gonna get the concept, you're gonna get the story of my life, you're gonna be entertained, you're gonna dance you're gonna feel emotion, you're gonna get the truth, whether you like it or hate it.
Gangbanging is a survival instinct, regardless of how anybody tries to paint it.
Obviously from childhood to my teenage years, I really came into my own. I left the house early; I was on the streets when I was, like, 15. I've been holdin' my own since that age.
I feel that puttin' in the hours and years in the studio, honing my craft, definitely played a part, me consciously networking and presenting myself as an artist that's commercially sellable led to me meeting the right people, which in turn led to them givin' me positive referrals to other people, which in turn led to me signin' a deal.
My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years. But as I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family, my aunties, grandparents, is in Africa.
Killing and gangbanging, that's just wrong.
I didn't wanna be looked at as no idiot, and I didn't wanna feel like I was uneducated, because I really stopped going to school at 15. I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit.
[In Eritrea] in key positions - president, government, police - everybody's the same [color]. It's a country run by its people. No racial class, everybody feels a part of it.
I'm focusing on the music, but I still got a cold library of books that I've either read or I plan on getting to.
It's my opinion that, if Barack did want to solve the gang problem, number one would be to work with people from the inside out, people who can actually give him an accurate analysis of the problem in L.A., because they're in it or at one point were a part of it, and now they're workin' to change it, and redirect the energy and the focus of it. And then consciously take steps to solve the problem. But I don't feel like zero tolerance, strict laws, locking everybody up is a viable means to stop that problem.
