Every time I'm working on something, I'm extremely excited about it.
When people are saying something to you, you gotta listen to them.
Lil Jon was definitely a pioneer for some of the punk-rap acts we see now. He showed you could scream on a song and still have a hit on the radio.
At the end of the day I'm not just sending beats in. I'm mixing the song. I'm recording the song. I'm engineering the song. I'm in the studio helping with the songwriting. I'm doing the whole beat - every single piece of it is me.
You go to a Rico Nasty show and there's gay people, trans people, white people and black people all in the mosh pit together, and it's beautiful.
The point of '777' is for the world to hear adult Key. Your favorite new rapper's favorite rapper, grown up. My job was to lay any canvas he needed at any given moment.
I've never seen Key think about how he was going to act on a song. He just is whoever he is that day.
When I make a lot of really good music with someone, I want to let the world hear it right now; unfiltered. I don't think it has to be more complicated than that.
I heard Idles and was like this is all I want to work on, this is all I want to do, these guys are the best. I got into their DMs and told them that and luckily we got to meet and the proof is in the pudding.
I get hit up all the time from every verified rapper with 1,000,000 followers like, 'Yo bro! You got the sauce right now. Send me beats!' Naw, that takes everything away from what I do.
The biggest thing Rick Rubin taught me is that you don't get any extra credit by doing everything yourself.
Greedo is one of the most important California artists of our generation.
I got way more songs with Key! than Greedo, but I met them via each other, they Facetimed me at 6 A. M. in Atlanta, wearing sunglasses. Key! said, 'You and Greedo doing a whole project.' And I was like, 'Alright.' Then they hung up on me.
I always had this ego where if I ever wanted to come back to doing rap, I could do that. That was not true. I would get stuck, I would be in a room and someone would ask me for something and I didn't have it.
I feel like I wasn't making music that meant anything to me until I was 26 years old, so I'm realizing that sometimes it takes three years or five years to understand what the point of even making music together is.
Most of these producers have an agenda of what they want to push or what they think will be hot for someone. I don't have an agenda. My agenda is to take someone and bring out their dreams, what they're hearing in their head.'
I played guitar since I was 9 years old, drums since I was 11.
Rap music's the only thing that ever mattered.
By the end of high school, I was interning for no school credit, no money, no nothing, for Jonny Shipes. He was my first entry into going to XXL, being around rappers, meeting Yams and A$AP.
The real producers back in the day didn't sit there and play every single instrument. They made sure the record had the best performance out of everyone involved possible.
