How did you start writing and rapping? Were you always talented as a writer?
I grew up being a great writer in school. I think my writing really comes from reading. My dad read the newspaper everyday. By the 1st, 2nd grade I was reading the newspaper fluently. In the 3rd grade I had Sports Illustrated. Actually I used to just put different names in and they used to send them to my address, and I would never pay for them (laughs). From reading like that I understood how to write. I really didn’t write my first rap until Kanye sent me a beat CD. From me just freestyling he was like, “Oh man, you cold. I didn’t know.” And he gave me a beat CD and from that point I wrote a song called “Foolish Games.” People listen to that to this day and are like, “Damn, that’s one of your first verses that you ever wrote?” It just came naturally to me. That’s what I tell shorties all the time: “You can not be a good writer in Hip-Hop without being a good writer, period.” Writing is writing. Poetry is poetry. All of that translates into being a good artist. I’m a big sports fanatic. Before you could watch First Take, you used to have to read these people’s opinions (laughs).
How did you get that first beat CD from Kanye? I still can’t get one from him now…
I was like 19 years old. My sister was rapping before me. She’s 5 years younger than me. At 14 years old, she had a deal with this jazz pioneer called Ramsey Lewis. He was starting to do Hip-Hop and they signed my sister. My sister had known Kanye and all of a sudden Kanye was her main producer. This is young Kanye before anything. He was being managed by Derrick Angeletti [D-Dot] from Bad Boys. I used to go over there and just watch over my sister. My sister would always be like, “Man, my brother is dope.” I was probably the freestyle champion in my neighborhood. They’d take me to parties in other neighborhoods. I end up rapping against the best person in the other neighborhood. That was my experience with rap. It was just fun. I was really into playing basketball at that time. When I met Kanye, I was on a basketball scholarship to Saint Haven University, so my summer was spent watching over my sister in the studio-well Kanye’s bedroom. One day we were over there freestyling, probably me, Rhymefest, Cap 1, Shawnna, basically DTP, GLC, and I just jumped in the cypher. And Kanye was like, “Oh sh*t you really are nice though!” He gave me the beat CD and I came back the next day and recorded two or three songs in the bedroom. And all of a sudden I was the hottest rapper in the city. Every rapper in Chicago came through Kanye’s house at some point.
That’s a crazy story on your start. Let’s switch gears. Back to your love of sports. What are the Bulls going to have to do to win it all this year?
It’s Derrick Rose coming back. They need to keep Nate Robinson and they need to add a shooting guard. If we add a shooting guard that can create his own shots and take some of the pressure off Rose, and we have Nate coming off the bench to fill it up doing what he does. That’s all we really need.
Yeah, Nate Robinson has the energy of 10 five year olds. He’s a crazy useful asset to have.
(laughs) It’s crazy. If you know him as a person, he’s just really like that. That’s really him.
