“My first album didn’t come out until I was 26.”

I was talking about in slang, and it was something that people in the music business was not really privy to. They didn’t understand totally what I was saying or what I was talking about.

When you’re accustomed to wealth, you don’t show it, right? That’s why the white kids in school could wear bummy sneakers; it’s almost like, ‘Don’t show wealth – that’s crass.’

I learned to ride a ten-speed when I was 4 or 5. My uncle gave me the bike, hand-me-down, and everyone used to stare at me riding up and down this block. I was too short to reach the pedals, so I put my legs through the V of the frame. I was famous. The little kid who could ride the ten-speed.

If you look at my career and you look at the span of my work and the things I have done, as far as to garner fame, you’ll see that I have turned down more interviews than I do. Or I turn down more things than I do.

As kids, we didn’t complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could.

One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That’s the American ideal.

Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who’ve never done anything because if you haven’t been successful, then you don’t know how it feels to lose it all.

You don’t have that fear. So why do you think people get stuck in those boxes? It’s that fear of going back down.

My thing is related to who I am as a person. The clothes are an extension of me. The music is an extension of me. All my businesses are part of the culture, so I have to stay true to whatever I’m feeling at the time, whatever direction I’m heading in. And hopefully, everyone follows.

Excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over again. You can hit a half-court shot once. That’s just the luck of the draw. If you consistently do it… that’s excellence.

Everyone’s supposed to stay in their lines and be neat. ‘You’re a rapper. You’re supposed to rap, carry a boom box, wear chains, and go to the club – that’s all you do. What are you doing collecting art?

They say a midget standing on a giant’s shoulders can see much further than the giant. So I got the whole rap world on my shoulders, they trying to see further than I am.

I can think of no one more relevant and credible in the hip-hop community to build upon Def Jam’s fantastic legacy and move the company into its next groundbreaking era.

I listen to everything – from Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette all the way down to rap like Scarface, UGK and Lauryn Hill.

Biggie was the King Of New York as a rapper. There’s a lot more dangerous guys than Biggie Smalls out there, you know what I’m saying? John Gotti was way closer to King Of New York than him.

When I came into the music, I was forced to be a CEO. I was forced to be an entrepreneur; I was forced to… because I was looking for a deal. I didn’t have this grand scheme of starting a record company and then morphing into a clothing empire.

What I’m hoping is that every album I’m going to do will give my audience something different, and that they’ll grow as I do.

It’s very hard to be an artist, on my first album, and I’m like asking for money for a music video for every song – it’s so hard to do. You have to pick your battles for sure, but I definitely want – and I’ve always worked to make it all connect – for all of it to feel cohesive.

When I first started writing the album, “Cry Baby” was a song that I really wanted to write because it represented all of these personal insecurities that I had for a long time.

People don’t make albums any more. It’s always about singles. I wanted to take that old-school approach.

Cry Baby wasn’t necessarily a baby theme but I understand what they’re saying. So like, Cry Baby is definitely a remaining character throughout all of my albums.

I’m obsessed with the venue and the people so it’s going to be really fun.The last couple of tours I didn’t have anything like that because of the budget, so I’m super excited because this is really going to bring the album to life.

So like what I want to do is connect all of my albums and make it tell a bigger kind of story. So the first album is very focused on her family life and her love life.

So like what I want to do is connect all of my albums and make it tell a bigger kind of story. So the first album is very focused on her family life and her love life.