In our city, everything a muhfucka do, they worried about what the next muhfucka gon’ say about them, instead of going with they flow. Niggas from Detroit make it hard on they self. In Detroit, there’s been decades of rappers and groups that have been successful in the city but, besides Big Sean, Dej Loaf, and, more recently Tee Grizzley, none have really broken out in a big way. I ended up winning and the next day I got a call to open up for Curren$y. I’m like, How you get these niggas? I went up there and was like, “I thought this was a rap competition” - was talking crazy.
At the time, they hadn’t made the “Rolex” song but they were still big as dancers. All I knew was, That’s the nigga with the afro and that other lightskin nigga who be dancing. At the time, I didn’t know who these lil’ muhfuckas was. One nigga had Ayo & Teo, I bullshit you not. Niggas had back up dancers, pulled up on a party bus with their whole family, had cardboard cutouts, all kinda shit. I was the first nigga there and ended being the second to last to perform. There was this competition called Imported From The D. I damn near was about to quit ‘cause I was rapping for three years and hadn’t made no money. I knew I wasn’t gonna make no money just off the dribble and that was the risk I was taking. My thing was - if I was selling weed, or getting on the road, or basketball, or I was cooking - all my time had to go to what I was doing. called me in the office the next day like, “You ain’t quick enough.” He paid me for that day, though. I did the hustling shit and I made some money but not no money like I make now. Really I was just trying another way to be successful at something. What was going on in your life at that time that made you want to take it seriously? I started listening to the Gorillaz, System of a Down, and shit like that. I didn’t get complex with listening to shit until I was 19. Like, every Friday the radio would do a mix and it’s all those fast-paced songs. It’s songs that are damn near from before we were born but they’re still relevant.
There’s this guy named DJ Snowflake and he’s got a bunch of shit on YouTube. In high school, you were either a Jeezy kid or a Gucci kid - I was with Gucci. From his early shit, to when I got a little bit older and he had “Tell Me When To Go.” That was my ringtone for like a year. When I got a little bit older, Atlanta really had it going: Ying Yang Twins, Lil Jon, Chingy. Both sides of my family liked Pastor Troy. There was also a lot of Pastor Troy around for some reason. You couldn’t help but to hear their shit when you growing up. There was a group in Detroit called the Eastside Chedda Boyz and then the Street Lordz - Blade Icewood and them. I really was listening to a lot of Cash Money. I don’t really eat red meat like I used to but my favorite thing to get is lamb chops from the strip club. We got a lot of different places to go eat at and it’s seventy-five percent good, for real. You go out of town and be expecting some good food, and sometimes you might get it, but ain’t nobody got food like back at the house.
It ain’t just all the way terrible but if you ain’t from there you don’t really need to be nowhere near the hood. I just kept working at it until I got comfortable enough to sing on a song, and I think the first one I sang on was “Peacock.”įor someone who hasn’t spent much time in Detroit, what would you say about growing up there? She said I was decent but I needed to work at it. I went to her the first time I wanted to sing and let her hear me. She was more in line of like an Erykah Badu - real soulful. I didn’t really get an interest until my cousin Ashley started singing for real. I used to go to church with my dad’s mom but ever since then I haven’t really been in church like that. I stopped going to church because I wasn’t really with my dad’s side of the family as much. That was when I was 9 till 11, but then I moved to D.C. I used to sing in the choir a little bit, had a couple solos.
0 kommentar(er)
