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Quotes 2
 As
soon as my mom would leave to go play bingo, I would blast the stereo.
Battling
with somebody, you do anything you can to strip their manhood away.
Before
I was famous, when I was just working in Gilbert's Lodge, everything was
moving in slow motion.
But
I'm not ignorant-I know how it must be when a black person goes to get a
regular job in society.
But
in 2000, people were offering me roles and I thought it was something I
might want to dabble in. But I was doing the music so much, I thought
I'd do films later.
Fame
hit me like a ton of bricks.
I
always wished for this, but it's almost turning into more of a nightmare
than a dream.
I
am who I am and I say what I think. I'm not putting a face on for the
record.
I
come from Detroit where it's rough and I'm not a smooth talker.
I
got caught up in the drinking and the drugs, the fighting and just
wilding out.
I
know and I want to be there for my daughter, whenever she needs me. I
want to be with her on every step of the way, ya know. She's the best
thing that happened to me.
I
know my mother tried to do the best she could, but I was bounced around
so much - it seemed like we moved every two or three months.
I need drama in my life to keep making music.
I
say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There's no in between.
People will either love you for it or hate you for it.
I
want to solidify as an artist and show that as I grow as a person and
make mistakes and learn from them, I'm going to grow artistically.
I
was born in Kansas City, and my dad left when I was five or six months
old.
I
was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I'm not ashamed of
anything.
I
would love it if, even for one day, you could walk through a
neighborhood and see an Asian guy sitting on his stoop, then you look
across the street and see a black guy and a white guy sitting on their
porches, and a Mexican dude walking by.
I'd
go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and
my mom never ever worked.
I'm
proud of myself for pulling through all that and my criminal cases, my
divorce. If I was still on drugs and living the life I lived three years
ago, I'd be a failure.
It
sometimes feels like a strange movie, you know, it's all so weird that
sometimes I wonder if it is really happening.
It'd
be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren't kids who took up
to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I'm not a baby sitter.
Most
of the time it was relatively cool, but I would get beat up sometimes
when I'd walk around the neighborhood and kids didn't know me. One day I
got jumped by, like, six dudes for no reason. I also got shot at, and
ended up running out of my shoes, crying.
Music,
in general, is supposed to be universal; people can listen to whatever
they want and get something out of it.
My
dream was like, let me get a record deal, let me go gold and I'll be
happy. Let me make a living off what I do.
My
mother couldn't afford to raise me, but then she had my little brother,
so when we moved back to Michigan, we were just staying wherever we
could, with my grandmother or whatever family would put us up.
My
only scheme was to be a rapper.
My
thing is this; if I'm sick enough to think it, then I'm sick enough to
say it.
My
whole market, my whole steez, is through the underground; if those
hip-hop heads love it, I'll rise above. It's like, you hardly ever hear
a Wu-Tang song on the radio, but they rose from the underground on word
of mouth.
Nobody
really understands the pressures put on me.
Personally,
I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look
at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape;
that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all
I love.
Say
there's a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white
school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter
- for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that's
saying is that he's living a fantasy life of rebellion.
She
really helps me when I'm about to do something too stupid. All I have to
do is think about Hailie. She keeps me in check, definitely.
Sometimes
I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.
That's
what I've found just on a street level - fans, and people on the street.
They either can't stand me or love me for telling the truth and saying
what's on my mind.
That's
when I decided I wanted to rap. I'd hang out on the corner where kids
would be rhyming, and when I tried to get in there, I'd get dissed.
The
movie is about Jimmy coming out of his shell and finding his own way,
not being a follower, being a leader.
The
positive aspect of the movie is that no matter where you come from, you
can break out of it if your mentality and drive is right.
Then
when I was five we moved to a real bad part of Detroit. I was getting
beat up a lot, so we moved back to K.C., then back to Detroit again when
I was 11.
There
are people coming to my house, knocking on the door. Either they want
autographs or they wanna fight.
There
was this mixed school I went to in fifth grade, one with lots of Asian
and black kids and everybody was into break dancing.
Thing
is, I'm not really a commercial rapper.
Well,
reading is the worst thing in the world for me to do. I hate it.
When
you're a little kid, you don't see color, and the fact that my friends
were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a
teenager and started trying to rap.
Yeah,
I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it's like,
anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can't
really speak on it, because I wasn't there. I don't feel like me being
born the color I am makes me any less of a person.
Yeah,
near 8 Mile Road in Detroit, which separates the suburbs from the city.
Almost all the blacks are on one side, and almost all the whites are on
the other, but all the families nearby are low-income. We lived on the
black side.
You
can make something of your life. It just depends on your drive.
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