I write on my raps on paper, and usually when I find a word I want to rhyme, I write that word, and then I write a bunch of words that rhyme with it. So, you know, “champ” was the rhyme, so champ, lamp, amp, vamp, tramp. And, tramp… just the first thing I thought of was Lady and the Tramp, and then I was just like, “We should totally deface this title and put some of that young sauce on it.” So I turned it into that.

Gotta have good weed. So, my weed gotta be the official weed. Gotta smoke good week. Only good weed. When I’m on the West Coast, the homies hook me up. A nice little package. Has a nice stamp on it. This one, I don’t have to roll up myself, but you know. Bust it open.

Does it play off the Rocky line? Or does it play off the fact that Cleveland is the champs of the motherfucking world and that your boy is definitely sitting here courtside with the championship ring?

I feel like just walking around is different, now. I also feel like in the age of where everyone is a celebrity, from the Viner to the blogger. It’s not just an actor or a musician that’s a celebrity now. There’s all these types that are in the public eye, but there’s something about the feeling that I get from people when I walk by and when they decide to give it up. It’s this respect of like, “Dude. You’re one of those people that came from nothing and made it with a purpose. And that fucking rocks.” And I just feel it.

It’s the same thing we saw with Rocky. We all saw a piece of ourselves in Rocky. He wasn’t given a silver spoon. He really worked for it. You saw how he took all these L’s before he got that big W. And if you’ve been following Machine Gun Kelly, or even if you fucking haven’t, that name has popped up in your life somehow throughout the years on this journey and yeah, what a fucking crazy twist at the end of all of this, for my third album to start to feel like the start of my career and start being the most successful, when really people are winding down by the third album. Or they don’t even get a third album.

That really is the feeling. It’s like, you go back home ,and you’re just held at such a high regard. It’s like things just don’t mean the same as before. Like, wearing a shirt in public just doesn’t mean the same. You’re like, “Yo I could do whatever the fuck I want, now.” That’s what it’s about. Just, this free spirit of just owning the props that you worked so hard to get. And just being like, “Yeah man. This is the personality that this city has bred and I’m like proud of it. And we went out, made this shit happen and we’re bringing it right back home. Let’s get it.”

I’d like to remembered as having walked my own path and created something new, rather than following in someone’s footsteps. I put my shoe in everybody’s footsteps along the way and realized that none of them matched mine. And said fuck it. I went and made a whole different set of footprints in a whole different path.

I trusted my struggle. It’s a long fucking journey to, not even to the top, but just to be accepted by the majority of people. Just know I laced the fuck up and got it done.