I've always been an outsider everywhere I go - I don't fit in with the Swedish rap community or the American rap community. But who cares?
I'm a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.
When I first got into the rap game, I had an early dream of unifying rappers.
I am not a rapper. And I believe people in India are not even clear with the whole idea of rap or what it signifies.
I've been called everything. Gangsta rap. I've been called conscious rap. You know, everything. Whoever feels like calling it whatever they want to call it, that's on them.
When I leave I always come right back here. The young spitter that everybody in rap fear.
I'll always love rap, no matter what's going on.
That's why I make mixtapes. That's why I work with Don Cannon; that's why i work with Big Sean. Even though I don't rap, I got love and acceptance in that community, and that's something that I really take seriously and hold close to my heart.
I want to plug back into the hip-hop audience. Whether it be fans who grew up watching 'Yo!', or people who have become familiar with the culture via the Internet.
The rap community know that I'm doing very well. They're embracing me... They like the flavour.
What I want to do right now is give hip hop back to the hood. Before it was a neighborhood thing where it belonged to the hood and the rappers were reporting and there were rules and parameters. Now it seems like the artist's game.
The rap community has been singled out as more homophobic than other groups, but I don't think that's right. It's homophobic, all right, but no more so than the heavy-metal community or the Hollywood community or any other community.
I still gotta reacquaint myself with the hip-hop audience.
When I started emceein', you had 500 maybe 1000 rappers in the whole world. Now there's 1.000.000, nahmean?
I went in reverse with this whole thing. People I've toured with were kids who consumed as much hip-hop as they could. I didn't do that until I started rapping.
I listen to Jay-Z, Nelly, Nas, Ludacris and all the young kids out there. I listen to them, and I have mad respect for them.
I would say I started rapping because my friends were doin' it.
Growing up listening to rap music, you almost feel like you should have haters. That's an important part of being a successful musician. It's a good thing, I guess.
I care most about what rappers think about me as a rapper, and I've gotten a lot of praise. I think rappers understand I'm a really good rapper, and that means more to me than a random person, you know, 'cause they know what goes into making rap music.
For some reason, we have completely separated Christians who are rappers, and we have separated, I guess, regular rappers. I feel that we should be able to mingle, enjoy each other's company, and trade ideas.
I was, like, in a rap gang. I loved rap, and it was all around me.
I looked at the rap community like street kids wanting their own brand. But now I look at that period with the rappers in the 90s as a trend of the moment. What it taught me was never to follow a trend, because trends move on.
I really didn't want to rap; I was just a regular kid. My friend - his name is William Aston - we went to the same high school together, and he was rapping. He put out a freestyle over Chris Brown's 'Look at Me Now,' and it was fire, and the whole school went crazy.
It might take a while but I think the rap game is the people that can do it. We're all role models more than athletes because athletes don't wear clothes like the kid in the hood and they don't walk and talk like the kids in the hood. We're closer to them than anybody because they can look at us and see them.
I'm a big hip-hop fan since being a kid. It was the first music that spoke to me and made me feel like, 'Yeah.'
