As a younger guy, no one wants to be on a highlight or somebody's mix tape for their best plays of the year. For me, earlier in my career, that was something where 'I'm not sure if I should go for this,' not trying to get dunked on.
I'm sure all actors have trouble. The guy who always plays the funny guy, he wants to be taken seriously. And there's the action guy who wants to do serious stuff. Everyone's grass is greener.
My very first scrimmage at Kansas, I got dunked on so hard by Tarik Black that I almost quit. Tarik dunked on me so hard that I was looking at plane tickets home. This guy was a senior. He was a grown man. I didn't know what was going on. He got his own rebound and dunked over me so hard that everything went in slow motion.
Those plays are winning plays, getting those blocks. Somebody's trying to dunk the ball and you get a block and that's demoralizing for the guy that tried to dunk the basketball.
There is something about me that is collaborative, that wants to get the best performance out of somebody else or to hear something that somebody else has done that's good and to try and make it great.
I should say if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly and notoriously, and those who feel like they want to sneakily, and wear taping devices, I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate.
If something can be proven to work, we should try it... Making sure that our young folk get the best education is the only thing that matters to me, and if something can be shown to work in doing that or if something's worth trying to do that, then I'll certainly be in the market for it.
When I get to do whatever I want, I'm perfectly happy. I've found that the best scenario is that I just do what I do, and if somebody wants to be part of it, they should work as a conduit for what vision I have. They should help me complete the universe.
All I know is that when I mix to digital and when I mix to tape I compare them and the tape always wins out.
For sure, 2010 was the best year I've ever had. It couldn't have gone any better for me. Even if I just won the Olympic gold medal, that would have made it the best year of my career and the best day of my life, period. Winning the World Cup races and the overall title just topped it off.
All my life, I've had these flashbacks, these dreams, nightmares, daymares, like visions, where I relive certain plays. Only the bad plays. I see them over and over, as if somebody's rewinding a tape and forcing me to watch.
I get hired as a writer or producer and I do the best I can to bring out that artist. If somebody calls you to do something, you go right for that vision and you're aware of that person's vibe. You're trying to get inside of them.
Often my best work comes from somebody trying to stretch me in a direction that I wouldn't normally want to go in. It's not something I fight at all.
There are a lot of times I have seen someone fight, and I think the guy is tailor made for me until they actually get in the ring with me. Fighters that are more aggressive match up better with me. There is really no defense when a guy is trying to get you. When a guy is trying to get you, you cannot get him, which makes the most compelling fight.
To go from someone who would put something on SoundCloud and maybe get 15,000 plays in a year to getting 100,000 plays in one day felt very weird. I thought I was dying.
It's very strange. I can't go anywhere without somebody stopping me, which is so cool that I get to connect to people that I never might've ever spoken to, or they have an impetus to speak to me. It's created a career that I wasn't sure if I'd ever really have.
I hate striking out, but at the same time, I'm much better at letting them go rather than, earlier in my career, worrying about it so much before the next at-bat against the guy. You grow as you play, and every year, I work to cut them down.