I still bump 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.' I used to listen to it before all my football games.Collection: Teen
Jeezy just recognized my grind, and I jumped on board with him to enhance it. Artistically, we're in the same mind frame. We come from very similar backgrounds - poverty. That's something that we can both relate to, something that we can convey in our music.
After I got dropped by Interscope, I knew in my heart that I had to fight back some way or not rap at all. I just took it upon myself to get myself where I needed to be.
Sports is one of the keys to my life. It definitely kept me out of a lot of trouble and gave me a lot of discipline.
I've been engulfed in sports since I was a 2-year-old; I picked up any kind of ball - a basketball, baseball, football - I just loved to play something. I loved the energy of being in arenas and watching the game on TV.
I'm from Gary, Indiana, and everybody's damn near at the poverty level. It's a rough city to grow up in, and it's a modern-day ghost town.
I just want to put my stamp on all kinds of music. Everything I do is going to be gangsta rap, street-based, street-oriented.
I'm cool with doing shows with 2,000 people. I don't have to rap in a stadium. As long as I can provide for my family and my art and live comfortably and live well, then I'm good.
I'd be a liar if I didn't say I learned things from Jeezy. Hell yeah, I took some things, some pluses and some minuses, do's and don'ts.
I'm like LeBron, man. I'm like a smaller LeBron. That's why I'm not in the NBA. If I had about five, six more inches, I'd be in the league.
I've been interested in basketball since I was a little kid - like, 3. The Bulls were my team. If you grew up in Gary, the Bulls were everybody's team.
I never write a song before I get the track because I just feel that I have to make a marriage with that track with my raps. And if it's something that's already there, it ain't gone really fit, I don't think.
Gary is a old factory town right outside Chicago. From my standpoint, my family migrated there in the '50s and '60s from Mississippi - Sardis, Mississippi - shout out to Sardis, Mississippi. My family migrated there just like a lot of black families in that area: they migrated there to get jobs, to get those factory jobs, that steel mill job.
The things I rap about are 100 percent real. But at the same time, I don't rap about those things to tear my city down. I give you the reality of what it is and what I been through and how it is living in those conditions in Gary, Ind.
Every project might only sell like 30 to 50,000, but I mean, I'm getting seven, eight dollars every CD. I make more money per record than an artist on a major label - I can definitely say that.
I'm so hands-on and involved in my own music that I feel like if I put the same effort into another artist, then I can definitely cultivate something great.
I'd be quiet as a mouse if I didn't have the correct feeling about my music. I feel like I'm able to talk about it and say I'm one of the best because I think I got the music to back that up. I got the live show to back that up. That's all that matters.
Everything don't work out for the best. You have to use a lot of those things as lessons in order to build yourself up.
I always want everything I do to be somewhat cinematic. I don't want to be the rapper that'll just post up and shoot a video anywhere with no real meaning to it.
I think that 'Pinata' album is going to stand the test of time. It's going to be a moment in hip-hop, whether people know it or not. It's nothing else like that in rap. It's going to forever hold its place.
I can do a whole project with Madlib and turn around and do a record with Gucci Mane. Gucci Mane, E-40, and Black Thought on the same record. I like all those rappers, so why can't I work with them in some type of capacity? It just speaks to my versatility. I don't just listen to one type of rap. I listen to all of it so I can make all of it.
Gary is a really impoverished town; it's in industrial decay. There's low employment and things of that nature.
My mom had me at a young age, like 20, and she was the oldest child. All her brothers were seven and 10, so I was like a younger brother more so than the oldest child. I was the younger brother to all my uncles, so they were going through their childhood and their teenage years, and I was right there.
I wanted to be a gangsta from birth, not because of the music but moreso what I was seeing, what my uncles were doing. I was just fascinated with the street lifestyle from a young age.
I'm not trying to act like I'm Superman or better than anybody else in the game. I'm just telling my story, showing my strengths and weaknesses - as a human, as a person, as a man.
I ain't on no major. Everything independent. Either way it goes, I am doing me, and I am doing Freddie Gibbs.