You grow, you mature, you live, and you learn. You get a little wiser, and you learn better ways to handle things.
Age don't count in the booth.
I don't believe in writer's block. I'll get stuck, but being stuck, I'll still write a verse. If you know where you're going, you can always start from there and work your way back.
My mother sang jazz and opera - she even performed at the Apollo on Amateur Night.
When you listen to old-school music, you can smell your mother's food in the kitchen. You can feel where you was when you first heard that song. That's what's beautiful about music. It's for everyone, but we all have individual memories that make us love it.
My aunt Ruth Brown was a jazz musician. I got hooked on it at a young age, understanding what John Coltrane was doing playing two notes on the saxophone at the same time, which is impossible.
When I started rhyming, my favorite rhythms were from John Coltrane and some of the things he did on sax. And certain rhythms that I hear on drums, I try to emulate with my words, dropping on the same patterns that them beats or them notes would hit.
My thing was, I loved music. I played music: I played the saxophone. So the little bit of music knowhow I had, I tried to implement that in every thing I did, from my style, my cadence, the way I tried to pause and stagnate it; that all came from John Coltrane and listening to jazz albums. Trying to rhyme like a jazz player.
When you look at hip-hop, I want to do that: to spit fire and take our best from the ashes to build our kingdom; to recognize all the regional styles, conscious lyrics, the tracks, underground, mainstream, the way we treat each other. Lose the garbage and rebuild our scene.
Back in the day, rappers were 'bump bump bump ba bump ba bump.' They was rhyming like that, but I was like, 'bababa bump bump babum ba babump bababa bump.'
No Doubt is one of the groups that I think everybody listens to, man, and everybody loves Gwen Stefani.
Jada, Styles P, the LOX, period. You throw on one of their joints... I'm in the whip; I try to keep my cool in the whip. I don't like bouncing around, getting my crazy on, but it's certain joints you gotta wild out. Roll the window down, blast the joints, let it be heard. That's one of them groups that bang it out.
Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man - it's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.
I started studying in '85 and got knowledge of self and started spitting. What was going on was taking the understanding of what I was reading and applying it with my life and applying it with my rhymes.
Everything I did on the 'Paid in Full' album and those first three albums, I wrote everything right in the studio.
I love what I live, and I live Islam, so I applied it to everything I do. I applied it to my rhymes, and I felt that I wanted the people to know what I knew.
Eminem is a master.
Being a new artist, I was trying to make a good album and hope that people like Kool Moe Dee and Melle Mel and some of the firstborns appreciated it. I was being influenced by them brothers there. That's where I got my start and my first listen.
I always say a rapper is like a halfback in the NFL. You got about seven years, then it's a wrap.
New York is responsible for bringing that raw, that real gritty hip-hop, because we... originated it.
