You’ve done music in Michigan, you went to school in Ohio, and you’ve lived in Chicago, Tennessee and Alabama as well. How are the Hip Hop scenes in all those places different from each other, and where does Michigan’s Hip Hop scene fit into play?
Personally, I’m not really a big fan of the Chicago Hip Hop scene. Actually, I won’t even say the Chicago Hip Hop scene, because I don’t know about the “scene,” but I’m not a big fan of a lot of Chicago rappers. I feel like a lot of them don’t have the layers that you might see in Detroit or other places. Everything has it’s exceptions, though; like I’m a big fan of Common, Kanye, Lupe, Crucial Conflict, Do or Die, PyschoDrama. That’s a couple that have stood out to me, I count those as influences. Down in Tennessee, at least when I was down there, it was all Three 6 Mafia, they reigned supreme, and that’s something I’ve never really been on, but even as much as I don’t like Three 6 Mafia, that region really helped to diversify the flow, diversify the different types of music that I was open to, able to rap on. There’d be cats from New York saying, you know, “You can never rap on a Three 6 Mafia beat”, but I can do that, even if I don’t like them, I’ve been able to adapt the flow. Being down there in Tennessee and Alabama definitely helped me appreciate 8Ball, Scarface, OutKast, Goodie Mob, even Ludacris. I heard Luda before everybody heard Luda; everybody outside of the south, anyway. I already knew the words to most of Luda’s album when I moved to Michigan. Like, I remember going to school hearing “Hey, you heard this guy Ludacris? He’s got this song ‘What’s Your Fantasy,’” and being like, “Yeah, I already know this dude.” Coming up in the Midwest, being a cat that was really into the Jay-Z and the DMX and the Fugees, all the mob beats and stuff, that was something I wasn’t used to, that definitely helped broaden my horizons. Looking at the East Coast art form, I found different ways to do it. Even when I was down there, I was still into Eminem and D12 and Canibus, guys who had that lyrical quality; the guys in the south are stuck somewhere in the middle.
But once I finally came up to Michigan, I always had that interest in the way the cats in Detroit rap. After moving to Michigan, that’s where it all really clicked at because it was the first time I was able to take it all in. Being somebody that was interested and/or intrigued by the music, it really clicked because I was around people who were doing what I was ultimately comfortable with. Coming from the standpoint of living down south and liking that kind of music, it was like you could write all the lyrical shit you want, but cat’s weren’t really selling that shit down south. Once I got to Michigan, it was like “OK, I can rap and write the way I want to.” People actually connected with it; there was more of a push to do it. I’ve rocked a lot of different places, and I have yet to see a better Hip Hop scene than what’s going on in Michigan.