A lot of people thought it was Mase, and when Mase heard it he was like, ‘Man, I thought I wrote that for Puff or something.’ I actually did play the record for Mase, all three verses, and everything. We didn’t end up doing the record. He was just going to swap out one of the verses but it ended up not happening. When we made that record, when he and I made that record, it was very intentional. I wanted an R&B groove type of track just to show people. I was trying to show people – everybody is like you are this lyric guy, such and such, and I wanted people to know what I liked and what I was a fan of. And Mase, I was a huge fan of Mase. I likened it to when Big was rhyming with Too $hort. I would have never thought, as good as Big was, that he would have found so much greatness in Too $hort, you know what I’m saying? I thought Too $hort was cool but I wasn’t even rapping. I wouldn’t have thought that Big did and I didn’t think people would have thought that I liked Mase so much, so much so that I could impersonate him and really go in with no problem. Impersonate him, sound like him, and really not be embarrassed, man, or my fans to be.

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Well I think marriage, first and foremost, is a great thing. I think it is awesome and yes, I do see myself getting married. When I speak of my parents in those lines it was more about telling you the reason why my mentality may be selfish as a man sometimes, you know what I’m saying? It was really talking to a woman, why I may be selfish, why I may be unfair, and that is because my parents were married for 35 years. After 35 years, you don’t think anything is over after 35 years, you are just stuck. And I was like man, if my parents can divorce after 35 years, I don’t think there was any bond stronger in the world than what I saw growing up, and if that can fail – anything is possible with me in a relationship, anything. And it is funny because I realized that I never thought I would be one of those rappers or one of those people who would be affected by that at my age. I realized that man, I think my parent’s divorce has affected me, in a very selfish way. Do you know what I’m saying? I can get very selfish and be like, yeah, I don’t give a damn. Once it gets stressful and I can revert to their relationship and be like, man, I don’t got time for this.

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Of course the street layer, which would be Scarface’s, would be throughout all of my music. But there is a conscious element to all of my music. Like there is always an explanation, it’s always regret, it’s always knowing right and wrong, you know what I’m saying? I always acknowledge right and wrong and Hold On is one of those songs where it’s an emotional record and I’m really trying to get it across that man, I want you to understand that I have a heart, do you know what I’m saying? I have a heart and I actually do understand that it weighs on my conscious sometimes.

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I feel like people look at Jay in a certain light, as far as lyrics and street lyrics and D-boy lyrics. It’s a certain level of sophistication that people have always put on Jay and he’s earned it, but I feel like I am up there as well. And I feel like this is somebody who lives it, this is somebody who’s there, this is somebody who is in the mix of it, and I don’t want to be overlooked in no way, shape, or form when it comes to street hip hop or any accolades that I feel like are given to artists that speak of this type of content. I always want to be compared. And I feel like Jay is the best living, so please compare me to his greatness. Especially if we are talking about this, when we are talking about the streets. Man, come on. I hear a lot of people say things like The Crown and all this and all that but if we are talking about that and we are talking about streets and lyric-driven hip hop I need to be in that conversation at all times. So I put myself there and if nobody else wants to say it, I’ll say it.

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In a competitive spirit, I feel like they’ve all died. I think if have done really well I have done really well with creating – especially with this My Name Is My Name album, with creating music that is raw and abrasive. Everybody else’s album is just so easy listening and I feel like that is where hip hop is right now, easy listening. There is nothing that’s urgent about it other than, to me, Yeezus, and that is extreme. That is extreme, and knowing where he started out and the premise was he didn’t want to be in a category with any rapper. So I don’t even consider that.

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I really was never supposed to be a rapper, man. Like, I didn’t start off rapping. It was always something that my brother was into and I feel like it all just fell into my lap and I never dreamed this. I never dreamed about it. It used to be a joke that I was never going to have the incredible ‘getting a record deal’ story. There was no amazing battle that I did to get a record deal, it just happened to be my best friends lived up the street and they ended up being super producers and my brother was a really good writer and has been a really good writer since a child. I simply just was hanging around the studio and you sort of – when you are around it you sort of know the criteria and the standard for raps, and that was how I learned. I learned by being around my brother and being around Pharrell and knowing what was whack by their standards. So I just tried to write. I tried to write a verse one day and everybody liked it and that is how I became the other half of Clipse.

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Man, a lot of times I just write off a feeling. I can just catch – I just caught the ballers, I put numbers on the boards, and I was like, ‘That’s repetitive through this song.’ And when you catch that feeling when you are writing, you can’t ignore that. Don’t ignore things like that because it is just natural and not everything always has to make constant sense but just don’t ignore that you have got a feeling or an emotion about a certain line came about because it means something nine times out of ten. A lot of times with writing with me I will complete a thought and then it has to go into – if it doesn’t already connect to the next thought it has to be something monumental to just go off and “Ballers, I put numbers on the boards” just was it to me.

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Meaning that the car keys to the SLS are different than the SL. There is an SL Benz and an SLS Benz with the gull wing doors, the keys are different. So I’m like, I’m so bossy, bitch, get off me, it’s a different jingle when you hear these car keys. Your SL’s missing an S, that’s the difference. Your plane’s missing a chef, the common theme, see they both got wings.

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Man, the beat is so reminiscent of RZA, Purple Tape, all those aesthetics, man. I immediately gravitated to it, it was a no-brainer to me. Don Cannon gave it to me and when I played it for Ye, he was like, ‘Man, yup, we need this on the album and maybe two more like it.’ So he was all in on it. He is heavily into the production side of it so he has a lot of say-so. But I love that, I love that beat. It was immediate, instant to me. There is nothing else you can do on that beat but rap on it. You could try to catch a melody or two but you have to fill in those lines. So it is not going to be everyone’s pick.