Freddie Gibbs
I still bump 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.' I used to listen to it before all my football games.Collection: Teen
It's in the American spirit to take advantage of an opportunity.
I'm trying to bring gangster rap back to the forefront, like in the early '90s.
I'm not trying to obey the rules of radio.
My core thing is gangster rap, but a lot of my music is melodic and carries a message of survival.
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.
My father took me to a lot of sports events as a child, and our TV stayed on ESPN.
Stuart Scott was a hero.
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'm just glad we get to see old records being broken. That's what sports is all about.
I started hustling in early adolescence.
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.
If you say your product is the best, back that up.
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 always feel like the underdog.
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.
I feel like some artists need a record label, and some don't.
Gary is a really impoverished town; it's in industrial decay. There's low employment and things of that nature.
I don't ever really plan my sets. I just get out there and feel the energy of the crowd.
I wanted to be in the NBA. I wanted to be in the NFL.
I grew up on N.W.A., Geto Boys. My dad was listening to that.
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 an educated individual.
Different rappers got different talents. It's like X-Men.
I want to be one of the most versatile rappers in the game.
When everybody goes left, I'm gonna go right most of the time.
Just give me a mic, and I'll rock it.
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.
Lil Wayne makes good music. He's one of the best rappers.
I played wide receiver in high school; then I went to college at Ball State and played safety.
I don't like rap that doesn't have a story behind it.
I ain't on no major. Everything independent. Either way it goes, I am doing me, and I am doing Freddie Gibbs.
The Bears need to let me be GM.
I study my competition for at least an hour a day. I get on the Internet, I look at what they doing, and then I look at ways to defeat them. I know their mixtapes track-by-track. I know some of their lyrics.