Chance the Rapper
I had already been making music for my whole high school life, and '10 Day,' which took me a whole year to finish, was about working with a lot of different producers and learning all of the aspects about being a rapper, from shows to recording to studio etiquette to marketing.
I've always been able to defend Kanye.
I go broke a lot... I go broke a lot because I have this understanding that whatever I put out there, if I really am doing what's right, it's going to be rewarding, you know?
I remember sitting on the back of the bus on the first day of the Social Experiment tour with my face in my hands. I emptied out my bank account, and before I did that tour, that was the number one thing I said I'd never do. I'll never empty out my savings.
I don't think I ever wanted to be like Kanye in personality. I think I definitely want to, have always wanted to, have his boldness or assurance in myself.
I just need to take better care of myself. I try to push it as far as I can.
I just get sick very easily.
I know for a fact that we're not pushed or promoted to speak about God with fervor.
I still think that God means everything to everyone, whether they understand it or not or can see for themselves.
I didn't know love until I had my daughter. I didn't know its bounds.
You can love somebody through anything when they're your child, and now that I understand that, it makes me work better with people; it makes me more understanding of how much dedication and love I can put into each line. There's no throwaway lines.
I want to be more involved outside just my community of Chicago.
I want to travel overseas and help out people all over the world.
I would largely attribute my identity - as it relates to music labels and corporate music giants - to Dave Chappelle and his relationship to and firm standing in Hollywood.
I don't want to say this in a lame way, but D. Rose is one of my heroes. His whole story and background and what he's done for communities in Chicago is super inspiring.
I love theater, and I've always been a huge movie buff.
I'm a big R&B guy. I'm a huge R. Kelly fan.
I'm a big Rick Ross fan, and I think everybody knows I'm a big Kanye fan.
I can't really speak on her policies, but I feel a certain connection to Hillary Clinton that's just not there with Donald Trump.
Where he tells you exactly how he views the world - just very straight Kanye, honesty that definitely gets your creativity and strong opinions out on the floor. I think it helped me find myself.
I'm a young dude from Chicago who grew up with Kanye as my image of hip-hop. Finding your voice in a room where you have to challenge Kanye is scary - but it's also life-affirming.
There's always been a quiet conversation and joke that if you're not hard, if you're not from impoverished neighborhoods, if you're not certain constructs of a black stereotype, then you not black.
There's a larger conversation we need to have about the role of police officers, their relationship to the people as enemy or executioner, when they're not supposed to be either.
I would never run for any office or government position. I'm not into it.
I think politics is a reason why a lot of stuff doesn't get done. There's a lot of favors, and a lot of people are held back by their intentions of being re-elected or the things that they owe their party or constituents.
I think when you're in my position as an artist, I can say what I want and talk about the issues that matter.
I like the fact that some of your favorite Broadway musicals are not made into movies.
That's what I've always wanted to do - work with my favorite writers and make something from scratch with them that we can feel like didn't exist before we came in the room.
Being in the space that I am as a writer, and just as a black dude in America, there's this push to be cool or be what you're expected to be. There's a need for a song that puts that in perspective. I think that's an important thing for young children to hear growing up.
People don't want rap to be anything other than it is. But genres expand. My contributions, no matter how they sound, will always be rap, because they'll always be black.
I've come to understand that art is awesome and beautiful because it's a reflection of life - but it's just a reflection, and the real thing is my daughter.
Mixtapes have always been a guerrilla-style means of moving music.
I don't have to carry myself as anybody that I'm not, and people picked up on it.
There is a multitude of experiences that make up the black experience.
I used to always rock a cap when I was in high school and get them taken away. It was an excessive amount. Like, so often that, at the end of each school year, there would be a box of all the confiscated caps. After they gave back a few caps to other kids, they would just give me the box because the rest were all my hats.
I don't consider being a musician the same thing as being a celebrity.
I don't necessarily think, as a person of influence, that it's always my job to influence people regarding my opinion.
I feel like, at a certain point in life, I'd like to be the type of man that gets married and has more serious relationships.
My grandmother is a huge part of my life. She's just a great woman: a woman of the church.
I think, as a black man, I have a responsibility to have knowledge and have an opinion.
There was a point where I just did not care about my body.
When I found Freestyle Fellowship, I started getting into the construction of rap. You get better at it the more you do it; you figure out the science and the math behind it.
I was a mad, impressionable kid, and every skit from 'The College Dropout' was telling me how I didn't need school.
When I was working on 'Coloring Book,' I knew that I wanted it to be a beacon for independent artists and music makers with their own agenda.
One of my biggest fears with 'Coloring Book' was that it would be labeled. I hate labels. I never sought out for people to recognize it as a gospel album.
I'm very into film and strengthening what it means to be a rapper and to be a black dude from Chicago.
I don't make Christian rap, but I am a Christian rapper.
When I was going out and trying to fully give glory to God, in my setting, I feared that people would be dismissive of it, like, 'This is Christian rap. I'm not trying to hear it.' But it's the total opposite: People were very accepting of it.
We've been conditioned to understand music as a field where you get discovered, and you're always trying to find that end. So 'my shot' is speaking of a variety of shots. When you're a rapper, you look at every shot as the one you're supposed to take.