First thing you have to understand is that freestyling is much different than making hip-hop music: there's another whole element to being a hip-hop MC.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I try to get the hip-hop aesthetic, most times without an MC. I don't use a rapper or a DJ to give it the hip-hop style; it's strictly the band that makes that music, which is a lot harder to do.
Hip Hop has become real constrained. The creative juices and creative flows have been diminished.
Hip-hop is one of the most free art forms there is. There's so many sounds you can use, so many things you can bring in. You never know, man. I bet years ago people would've never said they would hear me with Rick Ross, and we did four classic songs together.
Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change.
The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.
I'm forever learning and that's why I'm always able to create new styles and new dimensions of hip-hop.
The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.
Hip-hop is more about attaining wealth. People respect success. They respect big. They don't even have to like your music. If you're big enough, people are drawn to you.
For us to keep claiming this isn't Hip Hop and that isn't Hip Hop doesn't make sense to me.
Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.