London Is Burning
Why are we in Vinegar Hill of all places?
Because it’s a very calm neighborhood. Where I live now, it’s not very calm.
Where do you live now?
Soho.
Why’d you move there?
You know, after leaving Brooklyn, I thought Soho would be a good place for me to go to just chill. Because everybody in Brooklyn kept recognizing me… You know, I didn’t want to get recognized at the local fried-chicken spot anymore. I came to Soho to get out.
So how did you discover Vinegar Hill, and what’s its significance to you?
I’m a Brooklynite, man. It’s all about Brooklyn for me. I’ve been to all the little cracks and creeks where nobody’s been before. So yeah, this is just a nice, cool, calm place. I’d bring a girl on a date here to chill. The cobblestone streets, the gardens… I used to work at a studio two blocks away from here.
Can you tell me about your childhood in Flatbush?
I was one of 20 cousins. I had two brothers and I didn’t grow up with either of them. But I grew up with 20 cousins. It was a very competitive home. It was fun. We had a lot of playtime. My grandmother would leave at 7 a.m. and come back at 4 p.m. So we had the whole window to just get wild. Fight, play wrestling. Watch MTV a lot. Watch hip-hop videos: the Snoop Dogg, the Biggie, the Puff Daddy. We wrote our own raps there, we’d draw our own sneakers. We would take 30 minutes to draw a new sneaker line and then present it to all the cousins. I had maybe my first kiss there with a girl in high school.
How did that go down?
Actually, my first kiss was in the back of a van, headed to the movies. There was this thing called the dollar van, so I was in the dollar van…
What is the dollar van?
The dollar van is like a big cab that costs a dollar. At the time it cost a dollar. Now it costs like $1.75. At the time the dollar van would only run up from Flatbush. So people don’t want to take a cab, they don’t want to take a train—they want to take a short cab, the dollar cab. So, I was on my way to the movies and I was in the dollar cab with this girl that I was with.
How old were you?
In junior high. 15? Girl was 17.
What was your first musical memory?
Me and my mom used to live with this lady, and she had this Michael Jackson Bad cassette tape that I could only look at for five seconds—if I looked at it for more than five seconds, I would freak out. It was such a scary cover when I was younger. You know, every day I would look at it and freak out. I don’t know what the fuck is so sexy, so hot about that cover, so scary… It was like, “Oh my god. This guy deserves all the attention in my life.” That’s how that cover made me feel. That’s my first memory. I knew that was music.
What about your first fight?
First fight… I got jumped by 20 people.
What?!
It was maybe, like, fifth grade. I got off the schoolbus and these French guys fuckin’ set me up. Fuckin’ French-Haitian dudes. They were fuckin’ crazy. I was walking past a kid and he bumped me on purpose and I thought, “What’s going on?” Someone came up behind me, beat the shit out of me. I just came home and went through fuckin’ armaggeddon, right, told one of my cousins I got jumped. So one of my cousins said, “Yo, this is the rule: Anybody comes home beat up, we gotta fuck you up more. Or, we take you across the street and teach you how to fight. (…)
So this kid taught me how to fight. It helped out. But I’m a lover, not a fighter.
I can tell by your music. Actually, something I wanted to talk about—a song, not on your most recent album, but “Humdrum Town.” What was the inspiration behind that? It’s a beautiful song, lyrically.
Thank you. I was in a place where the city… the city could potentially bring you down, you know. The inspiration for this song started from a Morrissey line. [sings] “When the rain falls hard on the humdrum town, this town has brought you down. When the rain falls hard on the humdrum town.” “William, It Was Really Nothing” was the name of the record. You know, I think every teenager should discover The Smiths. So after that I was like, I’m gonna take this one phrase that is “humdrum town” and turn it into a whole motion picture.
“Humdrum Town” is a very emotional song for me. I got all my first emotional points out. Like how I never liked my name. At that point I didn’t have any money. It was more about hunger, more about passion, me coming up with all these words out of love…
That song’s interesting, because you say you’re not doing it for money, you’re not doing it for fame, but now it seems like you’re getting both. How do you keep yourself real? Do you ever check in with yourself?
Oh, I check in a lot, unfortunately. But yeah, man, I don’t know. I’m honest about that, and that’s why a lot of people became fans of the song “Humdrum Town,” because as much today as we got luxury rapping, you got Watch the Throne out now, you got bullshit about how luxurious you are in a cool way. “Humdrum Town” for me was an honest point.
I wasn’t one of those rappers who was like, “Check out my car, check out my rims.” You know, I’m not doing this for a check or fame, this right here is my pain. It was a point in my life where I really wanted this. I really wanted to start a career. But now I’m getting paid a lot, I’ve been everywhere around this world and back since “Humdrum Town.” And I’m thankful for that, but my lyrics change—I can no longer go to the place of “Humdrum Town.” My town is no longer raining, you know. I mean, Cannes, in the fucking south of France, on the beach, there are people coming up to me who are like, “I know who you are. I like your music.” And I’m like, “Whoa, that’s tight.” And my lyrics are changing. They’re about wine and chocolates, flying overseas, communication errors with girls. I mean, I’m into women, I’m into food, I’m into culture, I’m into clothes, I’m into jewelry now. Stuff I always wanted to do, that I did as a kid, it’s connecting now. Now my mother looks at me and is like, “Man, you were always doing this as a kid. You’re just doing it on a budget now.”