I said, "Oh well, I'll act." I started to study, but I didn't know what I was doing, and I don't know that I was taking it very seriously then.
When I first started out in music, I was so negative. I was knee-deep in the streets. Then my friends started going to jail. They said, 'Boy, you better start taking this seriously; you got a chance to do something with your life.' That's when I realised I had to focus. The music led to the acting.
Many who think that they are taking life seriously are actually only taking themselves seriously. Who takes himself seriously is over conscious of his rights; who takes life seriously is fully conscious of his obligations.
I played a lot of nightclubs in and around Tulsa till I was about 22, 24 years old, then I started travellin' around.
It's kind of too movie-like to say, "When I started climbing, I knew I wanted to climb Everest some day." Instead, I just started rock climbing as a kid, when I was 16, and then I started teaching and a buddy of mine started taking me out.
I started taking vocal lessons steadily. I started taking it seriously.
I went to community college for about a year but I'd started taking music seriously by then so I dropped out.
Other people started taking me seriously before I took myself seriously.
I started playing piano and guitar when I was in elementary school, and then I was finally like, 'I want to sing.' So I started taking voice lessons and decided I wanted to go to an art school and take music seriously.
With this record [The Colour and the Shape], I started taking the lyrics more seriously. This is a very personal album.
After the first three or four years of me taking rap seriously, it started to look more promising. I started booking shows and more people were playing my music, so I starting believing this could actually work for me.
Since I was 8 months old, till I was 12, I did commercials and ads and cute little stuff for kids. Then I had braces on my teeth. They took them off when I was 16, and then I started modeling more seriously and doing more fashion.
First, I started taking dance classes, and then I started taking singing lessons. Then my mom put me into a year-round theatre program where I did seven shows.
I started dance class when I was a little kid, and then, when I turned 11, I started taking vocal lessons, guitar lessons, and piano lessons.
I always want to pick songs that are really crazy rangy, and sometimes those low notes aren't there. But I started taking it way more seriously after a certain point, and I started doing vocal warm-ups every day, even when I wasn't singing, sometimes twice a day.
If you are a kid in Beverly Hills, (I am not putting down people who live in Beverly Hills) if that kid knows private school and a credit card... you can't say the kid is taking life for granted. He is taking the life that was given to him.