The reality is my career started with a song that wasn't finished and a video I didn't know was going on the Internet. It happened so out of my control.
I didn't have song rights for the first video because I didn't know that it was going to do what it did. So for the second video, I decided better safe than sorry. It is a really gray area as to whether or not you even need song rights to make a video like that.
I sometimes suffer from insomnia and one of the first times it ever happened I was like, "I don't know what to do with myself," so I started writing a song and by morning it was finished. It was about how I couldn't sleep... I was 14.
I sometimes suffer from insomnia, and one of the first times it ever happened, I was like, 'I don't know what to do with myself,' so I started writing a song, and by morning, it was finished. It was about how I couldn't sleep... I was 14.
Where is the video of Kanye [West] telling me he was going to call me 'that b***h' in his song? It doesn't exist because it never happened. You don't get to control someone's emotional response to being called 'that b***h' in front of the entire world.
It has been wild, you know? I started out just putting a song that I made out on the Internet without being sure if anyone was going to like it, and it took me on tour around the world with Justin Bieber. It's been amazing!
When I was growing up, I had three channels, and I didn't know what happened in the Philippines instantly if it happened. Now you can be on the Internet and find out what's going on in Zimbabwe. It's changed.
That's what I love about the Internet - instead of having to wait on radio to play your song or TV to play your video, I can use the Internet as a tool to get my music out earlier.
The reality is not exactly what the song started out to be, but it's not a bad song.
To be able to do a song with Kanye West and then a video with Hype Williams who directed the video, that's a highlight of any artist's' career.
Usually, I think of the song, and then the video plays out in my head as I'm writing the song. I started rapping to become a comedian, so I'm certainly thinking about the visual component of things beyond just the music most of the time.
You know, things kind of happen organically and, you know, Broadway sort of happened out of a career in performing and - which happened out of practicing piano when I was a kid.
When I appeared in EPMD's 'Hardcore' song and video that was just crazy. Def Jam had these little virals back then on VHS tape. Q-Tip was another very important person to my career. He had me in A Tribe Called Quest's 'Scenario' video when I was first coming out.
I wasn't into social media at all, but when I decided I was going to put out my own music, I said, 'Okay, I'm just going to post it.' And that's when it started its rounds on the Internet, and people started to take an interest in me.
I don't play video games because I know that if I ever started, I'd never be able to maintain a career again.
'The Cup' song did give a huge push, and after that, a lot of Internet happened. In the meantime, I was auditioning for many things, and 'Karwan' happened.
I don't think when I started off that I was expecting to become so specialized, but what happened is that when my career started, I didn't pick my first film. I was picked to do it, and it happened to be a horror film.