If I wasn't making music I'd still be listening to it and talking about it. That's why I'm able to chill with Denzel Curry and then Jeff Tweedy, because the thing that's linking us is music.

Everyone has a little niche in rap, and I just wanted to carve a piece out of it for myself.

Well, me and Freaky been knowing each other for a while, and he was always playing crazy music in his room, but he would never release it. He's, like, the most underground rapper I know, and he's crazy talented.

There's no right or wrong way to do things and I think a lot of the SoundCloud rappers with their DIY music are proving that to be true.

I'm aware that if I make a country album and release it, and it gets on the Grammys, the Grammys are going to put it in the Urban category. Just my blackness automatically sets it in there.

I love Baltimore, I miss the people, but I think L.A. is way more chill.

Black people are not a monolith. Black people have different thoughts. And sometimes people just need to hear the harsh truth - even myself. But you can't manufacture a hard truth and place it on somebody. When Kanye says slavery was a choice, that's not a harsh truth.

For me, sampling is a high art. Most people don't see it that way, but it's a beautiful thing. I wouldn't know anything about music if it wasn't for samples.

I'm going to shock you with the truth. I'm just going to give it to you raw, and however you take it, I'm just going to watch your reaction.

As a black person, I have two parties to choose from: liberal and conservative. If I choose to be a liberal - regardless of who I choose - I'm picking the lesser of two evils in my mind basically.

On 'Black Ben Carson,' I had strict no melody thing. I wanted straight, raw, rugged noise music.

People in rock had this idea that rappers aren't talented. In my opinion we're better writers, we think deeper, and our concepts are harder - Rap evolves faster than any other genre.

Everything I say is true and from the heart. I exaggerate some things, but the core base of it is just facts.

I'm always just gonna do whatever I want. I don't feel any pressure to appeal to anyone in particular.

The idea of me being an icon or something is a very funny thing, just because of my own weird insecurities. But, yeah... probably because I toiled away being nothing for so long.

The U.S. army is pretty terrible. Never join it!

Liberals allow right-wingers on their platforms to have a 'civilized discussion,' but there's no reasoning with racists. I don't want them to have a platform that humanizes them. I want to talk down to them and meet them exactly where they are, with absolutely no respect.

There's just more emotion and raw feeling in Baltimore music. It can't be copied.

I started producing when I was listening to The Diplomats. The first time I heard Cam'ron was 'Dead or Alive.'

Most of my experience with racism comes from living in the South.

When I first started rapping, I used to just jock Jay Z super hard. Back when I was like 14 and 15, it was, like, Jay Z, Ice Cube, and Lil Wayne.

Baltimore has the hardest work ethic out of all cities. It makes you want to work harder.

We need true free thinkers, people who really say what they feel and have good, genuine intentions.

After the military, I floundered around between jobs for a while, and there was an opportunity for me to go live in Japan. I was living on the Okinawa Airport Base, off the grid, no real address.

My first live performance was when I was in the military. I went to some bar, and they had open mics. You could just sign up and perform. Nobody cared. Nobody liked it.

The first time I ever went to Texas was on a bus with curtains draped over the windows. I just joined the military and got shipped off to basic training in San Antonio.

I don't know if there's anything Kanye West can do that can erase his influence on me, because it's here. It's already there. He can't even reverse that himself, because it's just so ingrained in me.

I just wanted to write about music if I wasn't going to make it.

I am used to making people upset and uncomfortable with my lyrical content when it comes to music.

Originally my entire goal with music was for it to be my job. When I sit down to make a beat, I wanna know that I'm gonna get paid from it, and that I can pay my bills and still have money left over to be a person.

America to me is where I grew up: in Brooklyn, around other black and Latino people who helped and loved each other. I just want to show people that America doesn't have to be this 'I'm in the NRA, blah blah blah' type of place.

I don't think rappers have a responsibility, but for me, I gotta say something. I can't just look at injustice and keep quiet.

I am used to experiencing so much trauma, that when I see it, I have to speak out. I don't think rappers have a responsibility, but if you don't say something or be silent or avoid it, I believe it shows your true real character to the world. It's like, if no one wants to rap about gentrification then I am going to fill that void!

Punk is all about doing what you want and being yourself. And that's what rap is too.

When I released 'Veteran' and the reception was good, it was the first time I ever worked really hard on something and had that hard work reciprocated back to me.

Veteran' is an exercise in editing because there is a lot of moments I took out and some that almost didn't make it.

I'd never been to a festival till I played one.

There are so many odd things that happened that are centered around Britney Spears it's kind of amazing. There's just so many cultural moments centered around her existence and nothing else.

If you listen to my music, you know who I'm talking to, what I'm talking about, and exactly what my message is.

A lot of these dudes in metal, they're just mad at the world because, like... who even knows?

I think it's important for black people in general to be aware of what's going on and do what you got to work around it. Not bow down to it publicly.

Rules limit you, and once you start thinking about what the audience wants or expects, it becomes a trap that a lot of artists fall into.

Now that I have a little platform, and there are more eyes on me to release something, all that does is challenge me and put me under pressure, and I love being under pressure, especially musically. I might fail, but I'm excited about the possibilities.

I'd rather be dead than work in a warehouse.

It just seems like Baltimore, talent-wise, nothing can touch it.

I used to get stop-and-frisked every time I walked out of my house.

When I first heard 'Pearly Gates' by Mobb Deep and 50 Cent growing up, the rapper Prodigy had a line about wanting to beat Jesus up. I wasn't religious, but I'd never been introduced to something like that. I was scared and mad, but then I asked why I felt like that.

The way I make music, I know what I'm doing, because I been doing this for so long. This is the only thing I'm good at.

I grew up in Flatbush, Queens, Laurelton. These are places where it's mostly black and there was a lot of diversity.

Back in the early 1980s when rappers couldn't perform in the fancy venues because the police were too racist and scared, it was the punk venues letting them in to perform.