I don't support violence and I don't support negative energy. I don't support people putting other people down.
I mean, everything that is upon this earth, even from a worm or a caterpillar that blossoms into a butterfly, you know, these things are just amazing.
I came in the gate as an African-American poor kid wanting to be a neurosurgeon but - with American life and the places I was put due to American history and laws and the oppression of black people - I had to make it work in other ways.
When I was younger, I was thinking of ways I could get respect so people wouldn't bother me. I was down for whatever. I ended up going to juvenile hall, facing a good amount of time for a first-time offense.
If the white folks feel America is great for everybody, I don't want to change what they love. All I want is to bring my love and respect in the areas of law, policy, business, and banking. That's what I do when I do my extremely rare lectures at universities.
I think for me, I get so much love that it balances or overpowers the hate. When I started making music, it was kind of flawless for me. I didn't get any hate early in my hip-hop career.
I don't have any contracts, so I don't have to split any money up. That was my main thing - just making sure I'm taking care of myself and taking care of Lil B. Just learning to survive, for myself and as a human in America.
Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive.
What I mean by being real is just when you are doing dance celebrations, sports celebrations, like the cooking dance or anything like that. When you're an artist, you want to always try your best to do the homework and see where it originated from.
I have a song that's called 'Rap Dreams, Hoop Dreams'. Besides education, everybody's got hoop dreams from day one in rap. Rap, sports, music have so much of an impact on the world.
I can joke around and do what I want and be great in my area and play around and be the best, but when I'm with Clams, he's the greatest and amazing, so I'm going to make sure I do what I've got to do.
Sometimes I'm dealing with so much business, and my mind will be so stressed, that I'll go a week without writing... But the benefit of doing everything yourself is that you get a major payoff.