How did you get started in the game?

I just started writing raps for fun to pass the time and make my friends laugh way back when I was 10 or 11 in elementary school. A rack of us were writing just for fun, but it just turned out to be something I was good at. I kept at it through high school where I started to actually find some instrumentals or loop beats myself on a boom box and would spit over them playing out of my clock radio into my boom box. I got a good response and became known in my high school as one of the few dudes that could actuallyrhyme. People would ask me to rhyme at parties and all that. But I didn't really get serious until I went to college and actually got on mixtapes and battles at clubs and all that type of stuff. That’s when I got to record on some decent equipment. Even though it was just basically two turntables and a microphone, that was a lot more advanced than how I was recording before. I went to school in Boston where they had a bubbling underground scene back then and just did open mics, some battles, and some shows and started to make a little bit of a name for myself and think forward about it as far as making some money off of my music.
 

What is your goal as an artist?

I want it to be my job. I’m tired of struggling, I’m ready to be comfortable. I don't even need the Bentleys and the bling, but if I could just not have to worry about my phone getting cut off or paying my bills or whatever and living somewhere that's not wild, I’d be cool. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be rich and have money coming out of my ears, but I would be content being able to make rhyming my full time job and making a comfortable living doing it.

 

What artist has influenced you most?

That’s tough. there have really been so many. I loved RUN DMC and Whodini when I first started hearing rap. Then I loved chuck d and PE after that, then I loved the guys like Ice-T, Just Ice, Kool G Rap, NWA, and the guys that really brought the street into it. I loved that. but from that point onit's been the people who keep it at the street level without being one dimensional as a "gangsta rapper." guys like Redman, method man and ghost out of the wu, bootcamp, and of course the best that ever did it, Biggie!

 

If you could change anything about Hip-Hop what would it be? And why?

I'd make it more original. Too many bammas are piggybacking off of people right now. look at chingy and j-kwon in st. louis. They’re just riding Nelly’s coat tails. People just take someone else's style that's already
sold millions and getting on that way. There’s hardly anyone coming out and making it on their own sound. Maybe that's why I’ve had trouble up to this point who knows. But people need to bring originality back into the game. I’d also like to see hip-hop become fun again. It was always fun when I was coming up as a youngun. Nowadays everyone's gotta look so hard in magazines
and carry this image that they're an ice cold killer or whatever. Let’s start having fun with it again. It’s cool to maintain your cred or whatever, but bammas are just too serious all the time. They need to kick back every once in a while and enjoy the benefits of how far this genre of music has come and where it is today.

What is on your mind as you're battling someone?

How much I need the money i'ma win. Ha-ha. That and trying to use what they say against them. Come back at them with something that they thought they had me with. But for real, battling's beat. I’m done with it. I’ll do it for a record exec or for big stakes or something like that, but otherwise at this point in my career it's worthless. None of the great battlers are eating off of this industry. I’m sure they'd trade in their underground cred for just one of Nelly’s paychecks. It’s the latest thing in hip-hop to be
whored by the machine. It’s not what it used to be. No one’s showcasing skills or showing how they can crush the next MC or whatever. bammas just come with written or they win off of having the bigger crew at the club that
night. It’s just become stupid and I’m trying to distance myself from that whole battling thing.

 

What does Hip-Hop mean to you?

Everything!!! It’s my life. I couldn't imagine being without it. It’s made me the man I am. If it weren't for hip-hop I would have lower self esteem, maybe getting into more trouble, be bored out of my mind. Whatever. it's everything to me. It’s my first and only love, the only person or thing or whatever that I’ve truly been madly "in love" with. It’s how I live my everyday life, it's what I breathe. It’s more than I can even start to put into words. For real.