Rapping's a release of the good and the bad - that's the definition of hyphy. You can't be like that, you can't get hyphy in, like, a business environment. I can be me. I'm energy. Hyphy is energy.
I'm my biggest critic. I want there to be no flaws when you hear it. When I think that maybe it's ready, I just hop in my car it's gotta have some bump - and go to corner stores, youngsters on the block, play it for anyone. If they get into it, I get a reaction, the song passes the hyphy test. If it's just cool, we throw it away; it's not going on the record. But if it makes you wanna move - seriously - if it makes you react the same way I felt, then it passes.
R&b, poetry, I'd like to do everything. But I'm an entertainer and entertaining is not just music. I can do comedy; I'm one of those guys, I can stand up there with a mic. I'm not gonna freeze.
I've reinvented myself every year since 1998, and my style's still changing. It's grittier now. I always gotta try something new. I've grown up. Then I was rapping; now I do music, I write albums. But my distinctive voice and style, people still can't catch it. They're still asking me, "What were you saying on that song?".
I'm just talking in my songs about what's going on, what's exactly happening right now. If I was upset about something, I wrote a song. There's nothing I can't speak on. And everything I learned is from real-life experience, all first-hand: contracts, record companies, representation, everything. It's not from books: It's coming from the the heart. You can feel my pain, you can hear me turning my pain into a party. I'm not gonna let no one take the fun out of it.
I'm a free agent. I want the major-label budget for my next album, but I'm too big for the label to pay me. I don't want to be controlled, to be watered-down. Labels were always asking me to do this or do that, saying that I was lacking something. And every time, I did it the next year. Singles? Radio spins? I showed 'em.
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