Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not a viral sensation or a megastar or anything like that.
Middle school is when I got super obsessed with battle rapping.
I just feel like being free is not going against anything you want to do.
I guess when it comes to music, I kind of study everything, including the market.
With everything that comes with music, obviously you lose privacy, personal relationships.
When the things that you fantasise about become a reality, you realise this is still a job.
On my new song, 'Eyes on Me,' at the end of each verse, I just kind of say something to my daughter.
Kids don't care what you did wrong - they're just up every day living, forgiving, loving, having fun.
I am naturally to myself, and I would rather have my own space, but I do realize what the effect I have is.
I shouldn't be moving with my head down or hiding behind my hair or thinking about my hair while I'm performing.
I get so many different sounds that come within R&B and soul, so I just kinda pull from a little bit of everything.
Whether it's my words, my melodies, or the production, I wanted it all to bring something out of whoever was listening.
I've always known how patient I've been because I've been patient with pretty much everything from early life until now.
Atlanta has had the biggest influence. I was born in Baltimore, but I've lived in ATL since I was probably about 4 years old.
I feel like there are only three ultimate things you can do while you're here: do what you love, love somebody, and create a life.
I love women, so everything I do, I always consider how they feel or what they would think or what they would say or how it would make them look.
Not knowing where I was going to eat or not knowing where I was going to sleep didn't matter as much as knowing I had a studio to record in every day.
I could have recorded music and hoarded it all because it's not good enough for me. Also, with dropping music, fans get what they want, and you get to learn from them and whatever you put out.
I want to stay in my home studio because I've pretty much done everything sitting next to the mic by myself as far as engineering, but No Excuses studio in L.A. has become my new favorite place.
I was looking everywhere, from horoscopes to just sitting, thinking, and writing, and I stumbled on life path numbers. And before I even knew anything about them, I just went straight to the number six.
It's dope to be an artist and to have that wall of separation, but also I feel like social media is there for what it's there for. I have a group chat with about 40 fans who I communicate with on the regular.
I had to go through being there for people and overextended myself to finally get to a place where it was finally time to figure my stuff out. Whether that was working on my music or working on me as a person.
Battle rap is about how much you can say and putting so many different words and expressions together to get your point across, and songwriting is like, how can I get that same point across but by saying less.
Atlanta and Zone 6 - they produce amazing artists: not just the club bangers but people who go on to become international. There's an extra sense of pride that comes with being from Atlanta and coming from the East Side.
I'm more particular about every line, melody. I try to listen, too, through other people's ears, too. I like this song, but maybe it won't carry across as well - I gotta figure out a different way to say what I want to say.
My rock bottom was somewhere in South Florida. I hadn't eaten for a while; I was super hungry. I remember being by a trash can and seeing someone throw food away. I thought about going over there, opening it up, and eating it.
When I recorded my first line on a song in a studio, I was four. My dad makes music, so he was kind of messing around in his studio, and he had a line for me to say, and I recorded it, and that was at the beginning of one of his songs.
There's this weird stigma of just being unattainable as an artist. I don't know where it came from or why it became the norm, but at the end of the day, I'm a person. I always want to be looked at as a person, so I try not to get that way.
A lot of my favorite battle rappers didn't have that much commercial success, so I figured I might as well figure out how to make songs, because I don't want to have a short-lived career or a career that is confined in just that realm of music.
There's a difference between me recording in Atlanta, where I'm in the midst of all my problems, and recording in L.A. or being on the road, where I can look back at things and have a different perspective. I do most of my writing while I'm away.
Honestly, when I'm going through the most things is when I'm more engaged in my writing or when I'm more excited to go to the studio, whether it's good or bad. I feel like, when I'm actually going through a lot of stuff, that's the best time to make music.
I didn't have to figure out music or aesthetics or anything like that because I was just working on myself. The more I came into myself, the more I was just like, 'I don't have to strategize or figure out anything. I just have to be, and everything else follows.'
Everything either is coming out of it or passing through it, and whether it's the lingo, whether it's the fashion, whether it's the culture, I always feel like Atlanta is the center of everything. I just want to make sure I bring something that's familiar but that's also new from Atlanta.
