Lil Wayne photographed in 2008

Lil Wayne

Photo: Jamie McCarthy/WireImage.com

Feature

"Lollipop" To "A Milli": Lil Wayne's 'Tha Carter III' 10 Years After

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Look back at how Weezy's sixth studio "event" changed the game and inadvertently became his magnum opus
Kathy Iandoli
GRAMMYs
Jun 6, 2018 - 3:13 pm

Few hip-hop albums are referred to as an "event" rather than a "release." However, on June 10, 2008, Lil Wayne created an event with the third installment of his Carter album series, the aptly titled Tha Carter III.

Before delving into this project, it's important to reflect upon two years prior. At the close of 2005, Wayne dropped Tha Carter II, an album that true Weezy aficionados regard as one of his most potent works, though the buck stops there. By the time the calendar turned to 2006, Wayne's fifth album flew under the mainstream rap radar, as other projects from budding acts took precedent, including the Game's Doctor's Advocate, Rick Ross' Port Of Miami, T.I.'s King, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor, and Nas' declaration heard 'round the world, Hip Hop Is Dead.

"I feel like in 2006, every great artist — save for Eminem and Dr. Dre who were in hiding at the time — made their album," recalls Ambrosia for Heads Editor-In-Chief Jake Paine.

Meanwhile, Wayne dropped Like Father, Like Son, a 2006 collaboration with Birdman, an album described as a cult classic by Complex. In the two-year period between Tha Carter II and Tha Carter III, Wayne was seemingly everywhere.

"Here's Wayne bulldozing through songs — being featured on songs every other week, more song leaks, mixtapes — there was a flood of Wayne music coming out," says Yoh Phillips, DJBooth senior writer. "If you were tuned in, it was a very exciting time because every week there was new music and every song was better than the last."

This period of ambiguity ultimately created what Jay-Z referred to as "Mixtape Weezy," an artist who saw commercial success yet voluntarily spelunked into the underbelly of rap's mixtape scene. Mean and full of lean, Wayne did the opposite of what most rappers did during that period, which was go into hiding into his next major release.

"He was at the top of his game," recalls Young Money/Cash Money Records' Senior Vice President Katina Bynum, who was VP of Marketing at the time. "Every verse he was dropping was different and next level. Just by him being on a song could save a career or break a new artist."

Anticipation was certainly reaching a boiling point for Tha Carter III based on these chess moves.

"He teased us with all of these incredible blows and wordplay and punchlines, so he had to wow us with his next album," Yoh expresses. "I don't think a rapper has done that well of a balance as Lil Wayne during that time. It all helped build the anticipation of what this album was going to sound like."

Then it happened — at a time when summer releases could get lost in the proverbial shuffle — Tha Carter III was unleashed June 10. Before the week's end, projections reported it was already bound for a cool milli in sales.

"I think Nielsen reported the million first week projections very quickly and that was the currency of rap thanks to 50 Cent," Paine explains. "Wayne was completely legitimized in that moment."

The album skyrocketed to No. 1, indeed pushing more than 1 million units in the first week alone — at that time marking the first artist to do so since 50 Cent in 2005. To date, it's certified triple platinum.

At 16 tracks deep, Tha Carter III is lengthy, yet packs enough diversity to solidify any listener as a Lil Wayne fan. Commercial releases like "Lollipop" gave Weezy his most successful single to date, while "A Milli" showcased his unwavering lyrical skill.

"When I heard 'Lollipop' I knew he had created a new lane," adds Bynum. "There was nothing that sounded like it on radio or anywhere else."

"Mrs. Officer" fed the ladies (despite being one of many arguably misogynistic songs on the project), and "Mr. Carter" was an unlikely win due to its collaborators, since no one expected Wayne and Jay to show up together. Then there are songs for the mixtape heroes like "Dr. Carter," where Swizz Beatz lays a boom-bap foundation for Wayne to lay on (rumor has it the beat was originally for Jay-Z).

"It's a David Axelrod loop, and was such a satisfying moment to hear Wayne rap over a DITC-sounding beat and just kill it," Paine says.

Other songs like "Tie My Hands" bring a politically charged Wayne with lines such as "Born right here in the USA/But due to tragedy, looked on by the whole world as a refugee."

Lil Wayne and T-Pain perform at the 2008 BET Awards
Lil Wayne: 10th Anniversary Of 'Tha Carter III'

Of course, what's a Wayne album without braggadocio and loose gang ties? "He's still set trippin', he's still making threats to anonymous adversaries, feeling his own fame," Paine says.

And while it's frequently slept-on beyond live performances, "Phone Home" anchored Wayne's trademark as extraterrestrial. "[Wayne] did an unbelievable freestyle over Jay-Z's 'Show Me What You Got' from [2006's Kingdom Come]" explains Dre of Cool & Dre, who produced "Phone Home." "On it he says, 'We are not the same. I am a martian,' and it always stuck out to me.

"Me and Cool were in the studio and wanted to flip that line. but make a beat that sounds out of this world. We had the whole sound effects, we were beaming him down to Earth. I laid down the hook, 'Phone home, Weezy! Phone home!'"

At the time, Wayne was recording at New York's Hit Factory, and it only took a short while for the hit to be made.

"A few hours later Wayne called him to come down to the studio," Dre continues. "He goes, 'I went to the boogeyman in the closet, Dre. And I came out with this.' We were blown away, and he even kept me on the hook." Per Dre, the heavy use of rock elements on the song led to the concept for Wayne's 2010 Rebirth album.

Strategic collaborations came with the aforementioned Jay-Z, but also T-Pain on "Got Money" (a precursor to the 2017 T-Wayne mixtape) and production from Kanye West, David Banner, Alchemist, and more. While Tha Carter III traveled in many directions, the undeniable focus of Wayne was evident on the work; though its success was also hinged to his omnipresence at the time.

The result was his most commercially received project. He won Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song for "Lollipop" and Best Rap Solo Performance for "A Milli" at the 51st GRAMMY Awards, in addition to scoring a nomination for Album Of The Year.

"We still can't get over not winning Album Of The Year at the GRAMMYs that year," Dre says with a laugh.

Tha Carter III's impact remains a huge footnote in the history of Weezy F. Baby. So much so that Wayne's Weezyana Fest this year will be dedicated solely to the milestone anniversary of the album, a further testament to its "event" status.

At the end of "Dr. Carter," Wayne smugly declares, "Welcome back, hip-hop, I saved your life," an obvious response to Nas' death claim from two years prior. While it's a large badge to place upon his chest, Wayne did save hip-hop in a sense. From itself.

"Wayne completely changed the game," Bynum says. "He's an original, a classic and there will be no one like him ... period."

(Kathy Iandoli has penned pieces for Pitchfork, VICE, Maxim, O, Cosmopolitan, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and more. She co-authored the book Commissary Kitchen with Mobb Deep's late Albert "Prodigy" Johnson, and is a professor of music business at select universities throughout New York and New Jersey.)

How The 50 Cent, Kanye West "Beef" Of 2007 Was A Hard Reset For Hip-Hop

Kehlani, Lil Uzi Vert, SZA, and Travis Scott

 

 

(l-r) Lil Uzi Vert, Kehlani, SZA, and Travis Scott
Photos: WireImage.com

Feature

How Hip-Hop And R&B Crushed Their Competition: Can Rock Bounce Back?

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Chart success, streaming, GRAMMYs and smashing guitars — how the R&B and hip-hop genres beat rock at its own game
Kathy Iandoli
GRAMMYs
Feb 19, 2018 - 2:20 pm

There was a time in the not so distant past when hip-hop was likened to disco. A flash in the pan genre defined by its hyperbolic expression of sound and style, disco fizzled out in the early '80s once the fashion and sonic trends attached to it expired.

Hip-hop was presumably following in its footsteps, especially when so many break records were layered with disco samples to create the early framework of hip-hop's sound — think the Sugarhill Gang's 1979 hit "Rapper's Delight" (GRAMMY Hall Of Fame, 2014), which sampled Chic's 1979 No. 1 smash, "Good Times."

But hip-hop persevered and brought with it an evolution of the R&B genre as well. Combined, the two genres became unstoppable, eclipsing a flimsy stigma of being confined to an "urban" box. Now, four and a half decades since hip-hop's inception, the genre has seemingly taken the music industry over along with R&B, beating rock at its own game. How did we get here?

Theoretically, the move has been gradual, though 2017 marked a quantifiable shift leaning in hip-hop and R&B's favor. First, there are the sales figures: Hip-hop and R&B accounted for 25 percent of music consumption in 2017, with rock trailing at 23 percent. Add to that an uptick in audio streaming in 2017 by 72 percent — with 29 percent of music streamed online being hip-hop and R&B combined, matching rock and pop, which also combined for 29 percent of music streamed online. The two previously gigantic leaders in major genres are now neck-and-neck with the "underdogs" of R&B and hip-hop.

Kendrick Lamar: 2018 GRAMMYs Performance

But per Nielsen's 2017 year-end report, eight of the top 10 albums were, in fact, hip-hop or R&B albums, including Drake and Kendrick Lamar for More Life and DAMN., respectively. Meanwhile, Drake and Lamar held down the top two spots on the list of most popular artists based on total consumption (sales and streaming), while Bruno Mars, Eminem, Future, The Weeknd, and Lil Uzi Vert were also among the other artists that proved hip-hop and R&B were the most widely consumed collective genres this past year.

The 60th GRAMMY Awards further punctuated that claim, as artists like Jay-Z and SZA found homes in the General Four categories, with Mars — who earned Record, Album and Song Of The Year — and Lamar sweeping wins across the board.

Watch: Bruno Mars Wins Album Of The Year

Phrases like "the death of rock and roll" have been continually tossed around since this cycle of news arrived. The latest strike against rock came when Coachella announced that for the first time in its 19-year existence there wouldn't be a rock act headlining the festival. The three headliners for the 2018 installment will be Beyoncé, Eminem and The Weeknd.

"I think it speaks to the strength of the music and the strength of the fan base," explains Jeriel Johnson, Executive Director of the Recording Academy Washington, D.C. Chapter. "The fans dictate who shows up on those stages."

While the 2017 tallies may suggest that sales and streams have finally caught up, industry insiders have seen the trends shifting over the last 5 to 10 years.

"Now so, even more than ever, music can be created and put out so much more quickly so when something is happening, urban music is reflecting that really quickly."

"R&B and hip-hop have always had a huge influence and impact on our culture, regardless of the time period — from fashion to slang to our tastes in music [and] cars," says GRAMMY-nominated producer Harvey Mason Jr.

However, with rap artists growing into cross-cultural icons, hip-hop poured into rock and vice versa.

"I immediately think of artists like Run-DMC, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Kid Cudi. These are a few of the pioneers who helped lay down the foundation for artists like Post Malone, Lil Uzi, [the late] Lil Peep, and Lil Pump to become the new generation of artists to continue the push forward the borders of hip-hop," explains Matthew Bernal manager of media for Republic Records. "From their trend-setting fashion, genre-bending sounds and riot-like live performances, millennials grew up watching these icons and the influence is clear in their music today."

Artists such as Rae Sremmurd, who released the groundbreaking "Black Beatles" with Gucci Mane in 2016, extended that aesthetic — the music video for the hit single showed the duo breaking TV sets with electric guitars.

Behind the song: Post Malone's "Congratulations"

"Post Malone's 'Rockstar,' which was the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for eight consecutive weeks last year, is a strong indication of how today's hip-hop artists view themselves: as rock stars," continues Bernal.

"Urban culture is the new rock," adds GRAMMY-winning producer Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins. "[In] every era there's a change that takes place, and right now Migos, Kendrick Lamar — they're the new rock stars."

"I feel like it was bound to happen," says Nicole Johnson, industry relations at music streaming service Pandora. "Back in the day, rock and roll was started by an urban genre and urban people. But then it became 'sex, drugs, and rock and roll' and, now, isn't that what these hip-hop [artists] are now talking about? Here are rappers just living their best lives, being themselves, tattooing their faces if they feel like it, wearing dresses on the cover of their album if they feel like it. It's all about self-expression."

Johnson adds that Pandora's Next Big Sound has been driven by hip-hop and R&B as of late, leading to the service's launch of the weekly urban station, The Sauce. "There are now so many [sub]genres within hip-hop, of course, it's gonna take over.”

But in the wake of hip-hop and R&B's takeover, so was the digital boom. Urban music jumped onboard streaming services early, with platforms like SoundCloud birthing its own scene, SoundCloud rap, which has given way to artists such as Chance The Rapper and Rico Nasty who have equally dominated the space as other hip-hop artists.

"I think R&B/hip-hop is benefitting from changes in technology," says Mason, underscoring how today's fast turnaround in music creation has placed hip-hop and R&B at a unique vantage point, especially when it comes to topical music. "R&B and hip-hop really seem to have their ear to the ground culturally and in society with everything our country is going through.

"It just seems to be such a transparent outlet for people with feelings and opinions, and now so, even more than ever, music can be created and put out so much more quickly so when something is happening, urban music is reflecting that really quickly."

So where will we go from here? Is rock really fading away? And, if so, can it come back? While the cyclical nature of music would reflect an inevitable return, perhaps rock will have to once again evolve the way hip-hop and R&B had to in order to rise up.

"It'll rebound in a different kind of way, I believe," says Jerkins. "Someone will come along and do it in a newer and cooler way. But right now? Hip-hop, R&B — that's pop. Because pop music is anything that's popular."

(Kathy Iandoli has penned pieces for Pitchfork, VICE, Maxim, O, Cosmopolitan, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and more. She co-authored the book Commissary Kitchen with Mobb Deep's late Albert "Prodigy" Johnson, and is a professor of music business at select universities throughout New York and New Jersey.)

Photos: Getty Images/WireImage.com

Poll

Drake To Jay Z: Most Influential Rap Track Of The 2000s?

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Vote on your pick for most influential rap track of the 2000s as curated from Shea Serrano's 'The Rap Yearbook'
Renée Fabian
GRAMMYs
Aug 1, 2017 - 9:30 am
GRAMMY.com

AMC will be turning Shea Serrano's groundbreaking The Rap Yearbook into a TV miniseries. The book (and series) features Serrano's take on the most influential hip-hop recording from each year since 1979. In the process, he deconstructs the genre, showing its evolution and growth over the years. Now it's your chance to weigh in on which hip-hop track from the 2000s — as designated in Serrano's book — is most influential. Vote now!

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What is the most influential hip-hop record of the 2000s?

Roxanne Shanté circa 1988

Roxanne Shanté circa 1988

Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/WireImage.com

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Roxanne Shanté: Biopic Reveals The Story Of A Hip-Hop Music Pioneer

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Ahead of the Netflix premiere of 'Roxanne Roxanne,' go inside the lasting influence and legacy of the indomitable emcee
Lakeia Brown
GRAMMYs
Mar 15, 2018 - 12:40 pm

Throughout history, many important movements have omitted the significant contributions of women. History simply became his-story. The same is true in hip-hop, a genre that is historically and largely dominated by men.

But hip-hop pioneer Lolita "Roxanne Shanté" Gooden is adding more proof that #TimesUp with her new biopic, Roxanne Roxanne, which premieres March 23 on Netflix.

Starring Chanté Adams (portraying Roxanne Shanté) and Mahershala Ali, the movie takes viewers back to the early '80s when the fiery Queens, N.Y., rapper emerged as a streetwise hip-hop teen legend on the strength of her recording of "Roxanne's Revenge," which is cited as the first (ever!) battle response song recorded and released in hip-hop.

As the film spotlights, before female hip-hop artists like MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, Lauryn Hill, and Lil' Kim sold millions of albums, the young Shanté was in the trenches fighting for a spot that already belonged to her and laying the groundwork for the great women who would follow in her footsteps.

"We all stand on the shoulders of someone," says GRAMMY nominee MC Lyte. "Because she was a solo artist so early on, she paved the way when it came to people being able to accept a female MC as an entity of its own."

That might be one of the reasons executive producers of the film, Mimi Valdes and Nina Yang Bongiovi, reached out to Shanté about making a movie. While hosting an event for the American Black Film Festival, Shanté remembers being approached by the ladies.

"They came down from the balcony after the show," Shanté recalls. "We've been looking for you and we want to make a movie about your life."

Within a year's time, Shante was at the Sundance Film Festival with a critically acclaimed movie about battling both on and off the mic.  

Hip-hop was born in New York City. Before anyone had even given the music genre a name, Shanté was in the thick of it. Raised in gritty Queensbridge — the nation's largest public housing development and home to hip-hop legends such as MC Shan, Nas and Mobb Deep — Shanté was a ferocious competitor who played with verbs and nouns on street corners. In 1984, when she was only 14 years old, Shanté recorded the epic "Roxanne's Revenge" at the apartment of DJ Marley Marl, a neighbor and music producer. 

It was a powerful, unforgettable and game-changing rebuttal to UTFO's "Roxanne, Roxanne," a song about a woman named Roxanne who ignored the group's advances. Shanté's lyrics were delivered off the top of her head — no pad and no pen — and she literally did it in between laundry loads. On that night, she adopted the name Roxanne, added her middle name Shanté into the equation and emerged as a rechristened shining star.

"I was about 14 or 15 years old sitting in my living room in London when I first heard Roxanne Shanté," recalls Monie Love, British MC and member of the legendary hip-hop group Native Tongues. "She was articulate, smart and just a beast. She gave the guys what they dished out but with a woman's touch. She didn't have to become a man to beat a man, and I loved that."

Take Note: Women In Music

Indeed, Shanté was a powerhouse. Her voice and heart were bigger, stronger and more powerful than her petite teenage frame. She was brave, maybe even the bravest.

"She went toe to toe with the guys and that was exciting," recalls MC Lyte. "It was unbelievable."   

"Roxanne's Revenge" would go on to sell more than 250,000 copies and spark the "Roxanne Wars," one of the most infamous and longest-running feuds in hip-hop. She had tapped into something — a girl beating the guys at their own game. She was hip-hop through and through but she was still a young teen, and many didn't think the two made a good couple. Case in point, Shanté recalls entering a rap competition that crowned the winner with a "best rapper” distinction. 

"I went against 11 opponents in one day. All men," says Shanté, who remembers the whispers about how great her performance was throughout the day, which led her to feel confident that she'd win. "Kurtis Blow, who I'm great friends with today, was one of the judges, and he asked what it would take for me to lose.  They told him that Shanté would lose if he gave her a 2."

And he did. Shanté was crushed. She had won but lost.

"[Roxanne Shanté] paved the way when it came to people being able to accept a female MC as an entity of its own." — MC Lyte

Despite these types of obstacles, Shanté has the spirit of a champion. She continued as a force in hip-hop as a member of the groundbreaking hip-hop collective Juice Crew.  She released two solo albums, 1989's Bad Sister and 1992's The B*** Is Back, but neither achieved major mainstream success. Always up for a battle, she waged war against a slew of popular female rappers in 1992 with her single "Big Mama."   

"She dissed all of us rappers by name. But I didn't respond," Monie Love remembers. "I had too much respect for her to answer back. She empowered me and inspired me to become a rapper."

That's the funny thing when it comes to women in hip-hop. There can only be one queen.  While the genre is competitive by nature, history has shown that men often collaborate and work well together. Women, on the other hand, are often pitted against each other.

"It's just the way it’s been structured for women in hip-hop," Shanté says.

But there's so much more to Shanté's story. Life doesn't suddenly end once the music stops, and it doesn't restart once a movie is made about you. Life is all the stuff in between and beyond. For Roxanne Shanté, it's about being a survivor, pioneer, trailblazer, mother, wife, friend, daughter, and an unbreakable spirit. Her life is marked by the power of believing in yourself despite what the world keeps showing you.

Years after that rap competition, Shanté bumped into Kurtis Blow. He told her that she really had won that rap battle years ago. 

"At that time, hip-hop was just getting started, and people were starting to get major [record] deals," she recalls. "There was no way hip-hop was going to be taken seriously if the best of the best was a 15-year-old girl."

Too bad hip-hop didn't know who it was back then.   

Catching Up On Music News Powered By The Recording Academy Just Got Easier. Have A Google Home Device? "Talk To GRAMMYs"

(Lakeia Brown is a freelance writer and host of the podcast, Decoded with Elle Bee. She has been published in publications like O, The Oprah Magazine, Essence and Complex. You can follow her on IG @decodedwithellebee​.)

CyHi The Prynce

CyHi The Prynce

Photo: Robin Marchant/Getty Images

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CyHi The Prynce On Kanye Brainstorms, Lil Wayne Tour, 'Nu Africa'

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The Atlanta rapper speaks on the music biz, owing his discovery to Beyoncé, empowering Kanye, and how his new album will change lives
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Oct 6, 2017 - 2:35 pm

CyHi The Prynce is not new to the game. The Stone Mountain, Ga., rapper's prolific decade-long career has yielded a steady flow of lyrical mixtapes, high-profile collaborations, and praise from the likes of Beyoncé and Kanye West. But with a bold, conceptual full-length debut album on the way, in a way Prynce is just getting started.

CyHi The Prynce: Writing With Kanye West

If his latest singles, "Movin' Around" featuring ScHoolBoy Q and "Nu Africa," are any indication, CyHi The Prynce's upcoming album will be impossible to ignore. While an exact release date for No Dope On Sundays is TBA, Prynce's concept of community in action is very clear. The five-time GRAMMY nominee — all five as a credited songwriter for Best Rap Song — plans to bring his Midas touch from behind-the-scenes to the main stage on his long awaited full-length debut.

In this exclusive interview with CyHi The Prynce, he speaks the truth behind the Atlanta rap industry, how he empowered West to speak his mind on hits like "New Slaves" and "I Am A God," recalls life on tour with Lil Wayne, and proclaims his love for some rather unexpected musical inspirations.

Your new album No Dope On Sundays seems like it's going to explode. Why do you feel it's going to change people's lives?
I think No Dope On Sundays is a great topic that's not just me rapping. I really wanted to be able to touch people in certain ways and touch my community in a certain way where we work on ourselves through our music. I think a lot of times when people listen to me, it's a very intimate moment. They might not have a lot of friends around or whatnot, but I wanted this concept to also be able to teach something and be able to learn something, and be able to learn from it, but also it'd be something where everybody can listen to it at once. So I put a bunch of different vibes … it's gonna reach every genre and every human being from every race, so I'm glad. I'm happy.

"Nu Africa" is bold, imaginative and fun. If you had to pick, which one of the hypotheticals in the lyrics is your favorite?
The first line: "Imagine if all the actors and athletes would go back and talk to all the ambassadors." You know what I'm sayin' … it's a lane that I feel like hasn't been tapped into and its potential hasn't been tapped into. I think there's a lot of things that me and my people are concerned about here, but there you could expedite it other places. Say in Africa where it's free [and] there's land. You could go back and tell them, 'Hey, this is what we're trying to do, we're gonna donate money, we wanna bring these resources,' and I think they'd be very inclined to it.

But I also wanted to do it in a fun way where it wasn't too heavy-handed, but also just giving them their imagination. … It's not like it's an exodus or something. It's something you can create in your own community. I feel like the Jewish community has a dope community like that, you might go to New York and they have Chinatown, you know what I mean? Just create that culture where if anyone wants to come get some culture from hip-hop or anything, you come to us and we can give you the inside scoop on it. So I think that's what the main reason for that song, and the main direction I was thinking when I made it.

Yeah, it's a real thought-starter …
I always say, "You can't tell nobody to cut their grass unless you cut your own." So a lot of times we have to also understand after we do express our differences and our concerns, how do we go back to the table and rectify them and just not just voice our opinion. That's what I like to do. I say I'm the Navy Seal of my community. The Army is those that march or those that speak out, but I'm the one who really goes and gets the job done.

Where does Atlanta sit as one of rap's capital cities now, compared to when you entered the game almost a decade ago?
Well, I think Atlanta has so much culture and you know I would like to say this — it's very touchy but I want to say it. ... You know, we don't have as many black executives or executives in Atlanta. It's just the executives are probably in New York and California and they'll fly there. So a lot of times we have to make our own executives. A lot of times that takes a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of, I would say from my culture, "penitentiary chances" — you know, where guys are doing anything to come up with this money to be able to fund their studio, to be able to market their project, to be able to do all these things. So a lot of times, people want to know why our city is flourishing because we have the hustle of doing it all ourself. So when you do it all yourself and you have different individuals you're rubbing shoulders with, and we're all into that, I think it builds up a platform that we can showcase our artists, and then other labels come down and, you know, joint venture deals and different things.

So I think in a nutshell, its just that environment of swag and talking crap and coming up with these songs and having fun. ... It's just very country but also soulful. I think that's how we keep it all together with all those different things around it that keeps the culture vibing.

So, Kanye told you that you owe your career to Beyoncé for telling him to sign you, but what do you feel you owe Kanye for the influence he's had on your career?
My life. I just think him just being able to teach me how to even communicate with the producers and the engineers [was so important]. Like I didn't know what reverb meant and 808s and 909s and toms ... it's just all these things that he knows and I thought most rappers don't know. But to be able to show me everything, how to put this album together, how to put these songs together and being able to communicate with the writers and the artists and the producers and the engineers, I just think that education is invaluable, like I can't put a price tag on that. I just learned so much and I'm still learning every day, so I think he's the greatest.

With the five GRAMMY nominations as a writer for Kanye songs, what do you feel he's learned from you?
At the end of the day, I think I'm a very out-of-the-box thinker. A lot of people don't know, if you listen to my mixtapes and you listen to his albums, you can tell there's a conversation going on in the studio, and that's what he likes. He likes to come in the room with different people from different walks of life and brainstorm, and that's mostly the album. Eighty percent of his albums are brainstorm. There's only 20 percent of us actually doing something. Most of it's like, the thoughts, the thoughts, the thoughts. The easy part is executing them, but the hard part is really coming up with what he wants to do.

What I like to do is challenge him, like, "Naw, you can't say new slaves. Yeah you can say I'm a God." "What you mean, you can't say that?" "Oh, you, what you wanna say, I'm a gangster?" When he said that, that was a real conversation. "What you a criminal? What, you a n*****? Like, what is it? Oh, you want to think of yourself to be the highest being, you shoot for the moon and fall among the stars." That is what we were talking about … people were in the room who were Christian and who were other different religions that were rubbed the wrong way and we had to have those conversations, so that is what I think that he got me in there for — to really cut that ice, you know what I mean, to actually get to the meat of the song and the root of the songs. I think Yeezus was the first time you probably heard that influence. ...

What hobbies do you have outside of music?
Outside of music, I'm very regular. I'm very go to the movies. I like to fish. I water my plants, I kiss my girl on the forehead, and I write. I write because I told myself if they write another bible, I want to be in it. If they write a Last Testament, my name has to come across one of them books, so that's why I'm here to write. I don’t have any other hobbies but to destroy rappers, that's my biggest hobby.

You toured with Lil Wayne earlier this summer. Any crazy memories from that tour?
We were on different schedules, and I had so much promo to do in between the dates we didn't really get to hang out like we should. But what I learned from him is he performs like it's his first show every show. I've never seen anybody do that. You're Lil Wayne, you can go in there and just swag out, he's in there like, "Wayne, it's not that serious. You're Lil Wayne. The tickets already sold here."

But it doesn't matter if it's a small venue of 20 people to a million people, he gives a show, man. I was impressed … and his voice still sounds immaculate. Like man, this guy's incredible. He doesn't get old. That's what I learned from him, the professionalism. He comes onstage and gives it every night.

You played football growing up. Who's your NFL team, and what is your pick for Super Bowl LII?
You gotta go with Tom [Brady and the New England Patriots], unfortunately. But my favorite team is … I'm from Atlanta, I like the Falcons, but I played park ball for a team called the Central Dekalb Cardinals, so I love the Arizona Cardinals.

What are three things you're inspired by right now?
I love Valerie June, I don't know if you guys ever heard of her, she's a country singer. She probably thinks I'm obsessed with her because I mention her every time somebody asks me, I just love her music.

I've been listening to a lot of '60s music, I've been trying to go into that lane.

And I love Fela Kuti. I could just listen to his music all day and just work and write raps. Those are my three inspirations right now.