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 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.
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.
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