Music should be your escape.

I love my mother. She's my first love. She has been through a lot and is a sole survivor.

I wasn't born a superstar.

My Struggles is a record close to me. It's about what I went through at home living with an abusive father.

You have to be ready to sing and perform at any time.

Everybody is doing the same old thing.

Hip-hop is definitely not what it used to be, which was creative, original music.

I got a mother who's very strong after taking the whippings that she took from my father.

I mean, when it's time to rhyme rhyme, I can get down for mine.

I want people to feel the heat while they walk down the street and they're just kickin' it.

I want to be cutting-edge.

I'm not a person that's walkin' down the street looking mean all day.

I'm not tryin' to come off as the best lyricist.

I've always had a lot of creative impact on the music with Timbaland.

No, because I don't want to hear what's hot and feel I have to copy it. I'll just make up my own thing.

Now everybody's sampling.

What my home life is like now is great.

When it comes to size, most people don't want to see themselves looking bigger than what they are.

And basically I always said when I was little that if I ever became successful or a celebrity, I would buy her this huge house and she would never have to work anymore. And I've done that. So I feel happy about doing that.

I want kids of this generation to see that everything is cool, that there's some kind of unity in hip-hop. We all found something that's really important to us, and music is all we've really got.