My purpose is to unite people, to bring us together. And above all, to be a champion for justice and a vehement opponent of oppression and justice.
No I.D. is like an alchemist and he'll only give you so much at one time. It's for the best at the end of the day, cause through the process of working with No I.D. I was able to soak up his perspective for songwriting and production and keeping music alive.
They say depression is just anger turned inward. Sometimes I turn it outwards, sometimes I turn it inward, but I know it's about self-worth.
Traffic' was an album that had a significant amount of songs. It was not complete and I felt didn't fully represent me as a person or as the artist I want to be and so when I started the writing process for 'The Autobiography' I was really turning a corner in my life.
I just thought I could broaden my impact and my reach by starting a non-profit and putting investment into our community.
Oftentimes I feel like I can, through the music, paint a picture of something that I can't look anywhere and see in my real life.
My body is what? Like 99 percent water or something. But I drink all of my water out of, like, plastic containers. You know what I mean? What is plastic? My body is not one percent plastic, but the way that I ingest the water that runs through all of my veins is almost strictly out of plastic. There's something wrong with that.
I think that everybody has their own interpretations of what it means to be American. But from my vantage point, being black and successful in the Unites States of America is the epitome of being American.
I never look at it as if any of my successes were given to me through fate. Getting record deals, making the songs I've made, having fans and working with the people I work with aren't chance. I know that dedication and work have gotten me to where I am and will get me to where I wanna go.
We're not able to hide behind myths of this being a post-racial society because Donald Trump has outlined exactly how a large portion of America feels.
Wings' was my moment to free myself from everything that was destroying me.
The disparity between the haves and have-nots was always blatantly obvious to me, and it's that exact gap that drove me to start writing and pick up a pen. I wanted to explain and understand the world around me because it was easy to see it was corrupted.
That's something I can never lose: my love for the art of rap. As I grew older and became more interested in song writing, it just pushed my possibilities further. I always have to have a foot firmly on the floor as a rapper, because that's how I started.
No I.D. helped me to just identify certain energies that I might not have really represented yet in the music that he picked up on just in my personality, or in the person he perceived me to be.
It's anxiety that led to a depression that I've been dealing with since I was 16, 17. That was the first time I was ever prescribed medication for either of those disorders I guess you would call it.