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As I grew older I found that I really had a knack for rhyming and I pursued that. So by thirteen I got serious about using my writing and rhyming skills. I did it everywhere I could.
A lot of people just love music, especially a lot of aspiring artists. They just want to jump in and start making music. They don't really take time to grow and appreciate the craft.
Being faith-driven, being a hip-hop artist, being artistic in an urban context - all of those things make you unique, and you put yourself on the outside of what's considered the norm.
My stepdad didn't have a father growing up, so he didn't know how to have a father-son style conversation. Plus, we had a tense relationship in which he never really offered me advice.
I always liked the content of a Common but the commercial viability of a Lil Jon. And I would say, 'Why don't those worlds ever come together?' So for me, it was like, 'Let's do that.'
Anomaly is when you don't fit the expected norm. Like "wait what is this?! It doesn't belong here." Its what the system never planned for but now has to adapt to. Its Neo in The Matrix.
I function, I live life as a Christian, and me living life as a Christian doesn't mean I'm a sanitized person. It means that I readily admit I'm a jacked up person, and I need a savior.
A lot of my wounds have healed. They have left scars, and I can either hide my scars, put a long sleeve shirt on, and cover them up. Or, I can show them off and say, "Yeah, it happened."
People who have stuck to their vision and mission no matter what. They inspire me. The people who wake up to non-glamorous lives to continue pushing to do what God has called them to do.
I try to produce music that is life-giving and inspires people to hope, but it isn't just for the super-religious. I want to address themes that people who aren't Christian can appreciate.
Waka is really intelligent. A lot of people don't know that because he just gets people hyped up, but he's a dynamic individual, and once you get to know him, you get to see a lot of that.
As we wrestle with questions of identity, we imitate those actions we think best fill an ambiguity we have within ourselves. And that goes for everyone; no one is free from this condition.
If you want to put on a suit and come to church, fine. But it's a problem when you make people feel like, if you don't do this, you're not going to be accepted and God doesn't look at that.
My mother was a - she worked at a halfway house. And one of the former inmates slid me a mix-tape full of different hip-hop songs. And so that was my first kind of experience with rap music.
Christianity is the truth about everything. If you say you have a Christian worldview, that means you see the world through that lens - not just how people get saved and what to stay away from.
I think as Christians, we all have the same calling, and that calling is to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul and love others as ourselves and to glorify God in everything that we do.
I thought that God and rap would never work. I thought that God wasn't okay with rap. People knew I used to rap, and I went to the Bible studies. Someone said, 'Hey, you should rap about Jesus.'
If God has called you to something, He will equip you to be what He has called you to be. If He has called you to be a responsible, faithful, diligent leader, as a man, He will equip you to do that.
I like to be in the zone. I like being in the studio with the artists, with the producers, with the musicians, feeling it, and going there. I feel like I have a lot of content to start writing about.
I live in Atlanta because Ludacris lives in Atlanta. And because T.I. lives in Atlanta and because Lil Wayne comes to Atlanta to hang out all the time and because Rick Ross' engineers are in Atlanta.
I spent some time in Cairo, and you see these Coptic Christians and Muslims holding hands. They got a rich history together of working together and cohabitating. You couldn't pay to see that in America.
I like to use my voice as an instrument and just play along with the music. That's really how I tend to my voice. The content usually comes after or during that process of just trying to be an instrument.
I think one of the areas of favor and grace that God has allowed us to see is internally he's just given us a strong sense of work ethic and craftsmanship. We really do work hard to make GOOD quality music.
I think success can be looked at in many ways. Obviously you want whatever it is that your aiming for to be something that God will endorse. I think when you can draw a target and hit, then it's successful.
When you have legends who want to do music with you, and you befriend the Kendrick Lamars and the Chance the Rappers, that's due to you really being authentically hip-hop and not being contemporary Christian.
You're learning things. As you get older, you're experiencing them. You learn about what it means to be sacrificial. Then, you get married or something like that and you think, "Oh, wow! This is the real deal."
A lot of times, when you don't have to deal with some of the circumstances that affect minority culture, you just don't think they exist. This is a conversation I have with lots of my white friends all the time.
In your late teens and early twenties, everything is idealism. Everything should just work in black and white. That's good. You need that. I think most revolutions are started by people in their teens and twenties.
I'm digesting C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller and so on and so forth, Francis Schaeffer. I'm seeing how they've affected culture and politics and science and so on and so forth, with implicit faith versus explicit faith.
There's a saying that goes around that says "I you crossover make sure you bring the cross over." That's definitely my heart and my aim. I want to remain distinct and authentically Christian in whatever realm I'm in.
There would be some times where people wouldn't know how to act around me. Does he drink? Can I cuss? What can I do? And then there was other circumstances where it was, I just don't respect what you're trying to do.
Authenticity resonates with people. The industry can be very misleading and is built to make people believe what they see. But people aren't dumb they can see through that and I think real music and real people resonate.
My mom was big on education, big on reading, so she was always pushing books on me: 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' like, 'Read these books.' And it was like, man, I'm learning stuff that I just can't get anywhere else.
I've always done music to push people to get them to get uncomfortable in their seat so they could wrestle with things. Not to become pew potatoes, just simply sitting there, growing fat with knowledge and not applying it.
A girl invited me to come out to a Bible study, and I said, 'Why not? I don't have anything to lose.' I went, and to my surprise, I saw people that loved God, but they were not square or rigid. They were just people like me.
It's unfortunate that myself, as a black man, cannot care about the issues that impact the black community without being seeing as a race-baiter or without being seen as someone who doesn't care about any other ethnic groups.
Faith is not about serving some tyrant in the sky that says, 'You need to get your act together.' Faith is about having a loving father who says, 'Hey, listen... I'm here with you. I'm going to hold your hand. Just rock with me.'
It's depressing a little when you don't see outside the tour bus and underground in a stadium. If you go outside near the venue there are lots of fans everywhere so you can't just have a minute to enjoy the sunshine alone and think.
Hip hop, this is church. Church, this is hip-hop. Y'all need to meet. I know you have some misconceptions about them, I know you have some misconceptions about them. Let's work through this because there's a lot of false perspective.
I knew my ways were unfulfilling. I chased power, pleasure, possessions, something satisfying. I knew I kept getting let down. I knew it was insanity, and I was never going to find fulfillment, but I didn't know what else to look for.
When I hung out with my Uncle Chris, things got real. He was fun, talkative, and loud. He was the life of the party and a magnet for mischief. Since he saw the world through a gangsta's lens, he wanted me to become tough and aggressive.
To realize that I had been living a lie, to realize that I was unsatisfied and I would never be satisfied until I came to Jesus was so revolutionary to me that I wanted everyone to taste it. I wanted everyone to see how awesome God was.
For me, 2016-17 was hell, and there's no way around it for me. I went through pain, depression, fear, doubt, and all of that was a journey that I was able to write through, and then I wrote when I was coming out of that dark place as well.
But I'm here to serve people. I'm not here to wave my finger in people's faces and point out to them how terrible they are or what I hate about them or anything along those lines. That's not my place. I'm in no position to condemn anybody.
I think we all have room to grow. I think every Christian really does need to take up their cross in a lot of areas of life and say, "Man, listen, regardless of what kind of backlash I'm going to get, I need to stand for what I believe in."
I navigate different cultures daily, and I understand how people can make false assumptions because of their lack of interaction with the cultures I find myself in. But if they don't frequent these spaces much, how can they rush to judgment?
The bible says it's by grace that you're saved it's not by dressing up that you're saved. So I just wanted people to know it's not about putting on airs, it's about being honest and transparent and saying "God here's my junk, can you help me?"
The Bible says, "Take heed, lest you fall," but this has really been the story of my life. I've traveled into other realms in order to be a light and be a missionary. Some of them were very dangerous, and I don't look at this as any different.
For me, my faith dictates everything I do, so no matter what I'm saying in my art, my faith is the driver for that. That's what I'd encourage people to understand as they listen to my music. It's distinct. My worldview bleeds through my music.
I think that as a Christian, we're to be a light in this world. I think it's almost like saying "Christian American," it doesn't mean that I'm not American, it just means that I'm distinctly and authentically Christian as much as I am American.