I just need to take better care of myself. I try to push it as far as I can.
We've been conditioned to understand music as a field where you get discovered, and you're always trying to find that end. So 'my shot' is speaking of a variety of shots. When you're a rapper, you look at every shot as the one you're supposed to take.
I love theater, and I've always been a huge movie buff.
I don't really like meetings, I like recording and performing music. I need to set myself up for when the time does come that I need better distribution or just a bigger team behind me.
I think it's very important for America that we're represented as promoters of peace, love, and understanding.
Mixtapes have always been a guerrilla-style means of moving music.
I want to be more involved outside just my community of Chicago.
The idea of 'talking white,' a lot of people grew up around that, just the idea that if you speak with proper diction and come off as educated that it's not black and that it's actually anti-black and should be considered only something that white people would do.
It wasn't until I left that I realised it's not weird to grow up in certain cities and, by the age of 27 or 28, for all of your friends to still be alive. I can think of a lot of kids that I knew in Chicago who were supposed to grow up but didn't.
'Hamilton' is revolutionary in terms of writing.
I'm a good man, and I'm gonna become a better man.
I would never run for any office or government position. I'm not into it.
There's a hunger in me that always wants to be creating and orating, telling people something and giving them information and getting feedback. There are so many questions that I'm trying to ask, and I'm still so far from being done saying what I gotta say.
There's a larger conversation we need to have about the role of police officers, their relationship to the people as enemy or executioner, when they're not supposed to be either.
I am scared of death.
I think when you're in my position as an artist, I can say what I want and talk about the issues that matter.
One of my biggest fears with 'Coloring Book' was that it would be labeled. I hate labels. I never sought out for people to recognize it as a gospel album.
I'm very into film and strengthening what it means to be a rapper and to be a black dude from Chicago.
I just get sick very easily.
I used to always rock a cap when I was in high school and get them taken away. It was an excessive amount. Like, so often that, at the end of each school year, there would be a box of all the confiscated caps. After they gave back a few caps to other kids, they would just give me the box because the rest were all my hats.
I don't think I ever wanted to be like Kanye in personality. I think I definitely want to, have always wanted to, have his boldness or assurance in myself.
If I was to buy a suit, I'd probably go to Men's Wearhouse - because you're going to like the way you look; they guarantee it.
I don't consider being a musician the same thing as being a celebrity.
People wanna say that they're part Native American or mixed, or anything other than black. We're raised to believe that there's something better about not being fully black, something eccentric about it. I'm saying I used to tell girls that I was mixed, which is a bold-faced lie!
I think the music industry is something that's very separate from music. So, by always staying on the music side of it, I've found success.
I hate that when you introduce yourself, and you're a rapper, sometimes you gotta say, 'I'm a musician.' Or, 'I'm an artist.' 'I'm a recording artist.' 'I'm a vocalist.'
When I was working on 'Coloring Book,' I knew that I wanted it to be a beacon for independent artists and music makers with their own agenda.
I've never met Eminem; you don't meet Eminem. He has his own secret service.
The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that.
I don't know where people think I'm from, but I'm from Chicago. It's really just that. People wanna romanticize it and say, 'There's two sides to it, and it's a beautiful love/hate story of violence and music.' But it's really just a very scummy place where people don't have respect for other people's lives.
I don't make Christian rap, but I am a Christian rapper.
I don't have to carry myself as anybody that I'm not, and people picked up on it.
I feel like, at a certain point in life, I'd like to be the type of man that gets married and has more serious relationships.
When you make stuff from the 'you' point of view, you really can't go wrong.
I'm light skinned, and I used to lean on that because that's something a lot of black people pride themselves on, and it's weird.
Music can kind of make you one-dimensional. People see what's on the surface and what you rap about, and they make their decision on who you are from there.
I was a mad, impressionable kid, and every skit from 'The College Dropout' was telling me how I didn't need school.
Kanye took me from a kid who listened to music to a kid who lived music.
Taylor Swift is just dope. She is an ill songwriter.
God and my dad gave me the gift of gab. I know how to finagle.
There's so much positivity in the world and your day-to-day life that to go as far as to say that you hate something or you wish it didn't exist and all the bad things in the world happen to you and only you, it's a joke. It's not real to have that much hate in your heart.
My come-out record, '10 Day,' was the thing people were supposed to hear and figure out 'he's good' or 'he's not good.' 'Acid Rap' is the comeback tape, and it asks way bigger and better questions than, 'Is he good at rapping?'
I think it's so dope that I'm here in Chicago and contributing to the music scene that's thriving. People are so happy Chicago's shining that everyone is willing to say 'I represent Chicago.' That wasn't always the case.
My daughter, when she was still in utero, she had, they call it atrial flutters. It's kind of like an irregular heartbeat. But when you're in utero, it's real hard to detect and also to treat.
If you can give away free music, you can give away free electricity, free water. Those tiny jabs at a larger infrastructure are what make revolutions.
I want to tell people to read 'The Prince' by Machiavelli - check that one out. It's just changed my attack so - I think so much more inwardly.
I think, as a black man, I have a responsibility to have knowledge and have an opinion.
Colorism and racism don't stop when you're a musician or when you have wealth or when you're in any given position.
With 'Acid Rap,' I allowed myself to be really open-minded and free with who I allowed into my musical space. I wanted to make a cohesive product, but I also just want to make a bunch of dope songs inspired by whatever sounds I liked.
