Look at you misbehaving. You know what I’m saying? Look at you acting. I could put you in casting. Acting. Call casting. Or casts. Because my niggas’ll shoot you. Film. Whatever. TV, we gone say. But my niggas’ll shoot you in them broad ways.

Mentally, for me, this album is about letting go. I’ve done everything I can to win over the people and make this one get a magazine feature and that magazine or do SNL. Or do the Seinfeld. All these things I’ve tried and tried. It’s like, man, I'ma go crazy if I can’t… I can only do what I can do. So this album is really just about letting go and me chasing my dreams right now. That’s part of the dream. I feel like at the end of the day, if you strip everything down, the American dream truly is just to be happy. But it’s so hard to be happy. You could find somebody right there on the corner, one leg, got 15¢ in his hand, but he might be at peace with himself. You could find somebody on Wall Street, billionaire, half a billion in the bank. Depression. Thoughts of suicide. All of these things. So it’s like my dream at this point is to find my way to true happiness. And I think that’s something that everybody… People might think they truly happy, but go see a shrink. Go see a shrink and talk for a hour. You gone be like, “Damn!” You gone learn some shit.

Scarface, Rozay and Gotti are three people that, where we come from, the DMV area, we looked at them as the next generation of hustlers. Scarface is the OG and was super big in D.C. His whole career. We love him. He’s been performing with Backyard Band and those are our street legends. Shoutout to Backyard Band. Los, Genghis and them. But he been rocking with them. So when I was in middle school—8th grade, 9th grade—I went to this little variety concert. I believe it was like ‘Confessions of Fire’ Cam'ron and maybe like Ludacris, but Backyard was headlining that joint. Scarface performed, and he came back out and started playing with the band. So, I just always looked up to him. On one of these arms, I got Scarface lyrics tatted on me. The joint from “Smile”: “I often wish I could save everyone. But I’m a dreamer”. And Rozay is the nigga that gave me the ball. I’m so competitive because of sports and I feel like I got traded and I got traded right after my rookie season, you feel me? And then Ross was like, “I'ma give you the ball 20 times a game.” And I fucking made the Pro Bowl. He changed my life and the funny thing about it is, anybody who follows me knows I did this “Aston Martin” freestyle. I did that joint before I even knew I was going to sign to Maybach. I said something about Ross having the summer, or whatever. He changed my life from on the entrepreneurship shit, to being motivated and just running your race. Gotti, to me, is one of the first industry people that was fucking with me on that level. Those type of rappers that we listen to in D.C. He put me and J. Cole on one of his remixes, early in our run. Another brother that’s just doing big things and getting money and running his race.

I met No Credit when we started doing Ambition and we stuck together. But I was the main producer on “Simple Man,” but No Credit co-produced—No Credit is my Young Guru, he’s my 40. He’s my right hand when it comes to my mixing and my sound and stuff like that.

I was talking about Scarface, how I got Scarface lyrics tatted on me. I have “I’m a dreamer” tatted on me, It’s about wanting to save everybody, and my only wish is I could save everyone. I’m a dreamer, and anybody who went to Howard, got a friend in DC, from DC, anything, you know, like, I was the first person to get on that level out of DC and I was only 23 years old when it happened, and that was a lot of burden for a young kid to be going through, to be the first from the nation’s capital.

Anybody from DC, Maryland, Virginia knows what Scarface meant to us in the 90’s and early 2000’s. He used to perform with Backyard Band. He didn’t just perform, he played the bass. That was big. I remember first seeing him when I was in middle school and he was playing with Backyard and I was just so blown away. He got a lot of hood classics, “My Block,” “Guess Who’s Back,” that’s my era of Scarface, but he was already a legend in DC, so that’s why his name is first.

Morris Day’s band was called “The Time.” Some people know. Rest in peace to Prince too. “Jungle Love,” all that. Jerome would hold the mirror up for Morris' on stage —I was in my bag at the end talking about lil shit. I don’t be on nothing though.

When I was a kid, I liked Morris Day better than Prince. Because I saw the movie and was like, “Nah! I like that one!” You feel me? And he was on Moesha and shit. So I was fucking with Morris Day. Me and Tre used to do the Go-Go’s when we was young. We used to always do the… He would put the fake mirror up and I would be doing my little shit and the girls would be like, “Ahhhhh!” So it was just a little vibe paying homage to that time. And to Morris Day. And I got some time. Because Morris Day’s band was obviously The Time. It was just some slight shit. I hope niggas fuck with it though.