But I think mainly, you know, just up in the East Coast, it's where it all originated. You know, Philadelphia. It goes back to the beginning. So, you know, fans have a lot of history, and they love their teams up here.
I travel a lot. I'll go back and forth, you know, West Coast-East Coast, but it's separated by segments. So it's not a daily thing.
I meet people and a lot of times, instead of saying, "Are you from the East Coast?" people just go, "you're from the East Coast, right?", having no reason to have known that. I don't know what that is. Maybe it's just that I'm Jewish.
I get a lot of support from the West Coast. But I think that's beginning to change. I think, as the awareness goes up, and as I continue to be consistent, more people from my area come around, and they're converted into Joe Budden fans.
I didn't grow up in one place, so I never had a certain mentality. I have some aspects of growing up in Texas, but I also have a lot of East Coast family. I would have loved to grow up on the East Coast.
But then again in the East Coast, I think, Tupac, inspired everybody on the East Coast, everybody down south, everybody in the West Coast you know what sayin'.
You know how, when you fly from coast to coast on a really clear day, looking down from many miles up, you can see the little baseball diamonds everywhere? And every time I see a baseball diamond my heart goes out to it. And I think somewhere down there- I don't see any houses, I can hardly see any roads- but I know that people down there are playing the game we all love.
I think it's cool that my fans know more about me than a lot of other fans know about the people they look up to.
We love playing together and we love adversity. You know, back-to-back, the two best teams in the East.
I don't know, samples are just like unlimited ideas, you know? Sometimes a lot of people sample one song. A lot of it is also really just up to the artist and their creativity to see where it goes and what they want to do.
I think a lot of my fans are anxious for more than just my singles. They know I'm a dreamer. They know I'm someone who is real spiritual. I love to have fun, and I always have fun songs - songs you can party to. But I also always have songs you can live to, that when you're depressed, it may lift your spirits up.
I think there's, you know, somewhere inside of us there's that - that fear of one day waking up and, you know, the fans - the fans move on to the next band or something.
I think it's important to understand Shari'a to be rooted in history - what we know about the history and what we don't know about the history. So then, if people want to argue, at least they're arguing from the same point and we know what we know, and we know what we don't know.
It's been rough for me trying to find my position in the struggle and where my voice is needed and helpful. You know, I grew up in Philadelphia, and Philadelphia has a really rough police-brutality history. I grew up in a neighborhood where it was very clear that the police were "them" and we were "us".
I love Rampage fans. I don't love all MMA fans, but I love Rampage fans. And I really want my fans to know that. I think my fans know when they come in contact with me.
I really love doing nothing. I really love just being at home and taking a couple of days, you know, doing nothing. You know what I mean? Just getting up, being around the house, going outside the back yard, coming back in; I really like to do nothing because I travel a lot. There's a lot of travelling. There's a lot of on the phone all the time. There's a lot of looking at papers and reading things and so you don't want to read magazines and you don't want to do anything; you don't want to read books, you just want to just kind of shut down a little bit.
I think you know what you're up against when you take on a piece that you know is going to involve dragging up a lot emotions - you can end up being deeply immersed in gloom.