A Quote by Ice Cube
Whatever happened in the neighborhood. That's what I was rapping about. And that sparked people's interest. And that's what kind of put me on that path.
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I don't miss much about my childhood. I lived in a good neighborhood, a wacky neighborhood. It was a very boy-heavy neighborhood - kind of Lord of the Flies-y. So many weird things happened, funny things.
I saw my father writing songs and he would include me in the process when I was little so that kind of sparked my interest for the vocation.
After working on 'Europa,' I found it incredibly freeing to speak English in a film, so it kind of sparked an interest in me as an artist to improve my acting.
Expectations are usually predicated on the idea that the everyday things that happen to ordinary people shouldn't happen to you. People hold the idea of being ordinary in absolute contempt, so when they face an illness, poverty, or any kind of catastrophe, they say, "I can't believe this happened to me." And who did you think it was going to happen to - the woman across the street? It makes them think, "I must be on the wrong path." But what if something you thought was bad was the best thing that ever happened to you? What if that was part of your path?
Build. Transform. Love. These are words I use all the time as we speak about community building and even real estate development because these are the kind of communities, like, we want to show you don't have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one. And when people think about living in a neighborhood, they are not thinking about fight - the community of their dreams, they are not fighting in it, they are not struggling in it. It's not, "Oh, I gotta put on my armor." All the time. I don't want to live like that. I don't.
People think that whatever I put into strips has happened to me in my life.
When I'm rapping, like, a turn up song, I'm thinking about what the people want to hear; this is what they're going to like. When I'm singing, I'm, like, telling my story. I'm not worried if people like it; I'm just trying to be truthful, you know what I'm saying? I'm just talking about something that happened to me.
Well I've also kind of noticed that, whatever energy that you put out, is kind of the energy that you receive. And so people are just really lovely and kind and soft spoken with me.
Just to stay focused on my path and not the path that other people or media want to put me in. Just to stay focused on my vision, because I put out what I want people to know about me. Everything else is what the media puts out.
I like challenging myself. I like the challenge of rapping to fast beats, rapping to beats that are super slow, whatever. I like the challenges, so I'm not afraid to take on any piece of music and create a song to it if it feels right to me.
If you have an all-white neighborhood you don't call it a segregated neighborhood. But you call an all-black neighborhood a segregated neighborhood. And why? Because the segregated neighborhood is the one that's controlled by the ou - from the outside by others, but a separate neighborhood is a neighborhood that is independent, it's equal, it can do - it can stand on its own two feet, such as the neighborhood. It's an independent, free neighborhood, free community.
J has told me about his past. I know what happened and why. But he is the one person who made me believe in my talent and whatever happened in the past, he's been a wonderful manager to me.
It never crossed my mind that I was the white guy rapping. I was best friends with Chamillionaire and whatever he did, I did. If he rapped, I rapped. It was something we did for fun at the track meets or basketball games. Or get in these freestyle cyphers with other schools. Me and Cham rapping together.
I don't really have any interest in allowing other people's kind of idiotic, unnecessary, either bigotry or hatred or whatever derision they have for me, I don't allow for it to really bother me, because I don't need it.
Well, the first thing I do is I try to listen to whatever rapping is already on the track. I listen for cadence and melody to see how the track's already been written, and to make sure that whatever flow or flows I decide to run with, or patterns or melodies that I decide to put into the song, that they're not already in there. Then I try to see if there's a different part of the subject matter that I can talk about.
My interest in acting was overwhelming, but I wasn't thinking, "I'm going to California and I'm going to become a movie star." Things were different then. I lived just for the moment, and whatever happened, happened.
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