Who'd you listen to in fifth grade, like at that age?

Shit, I was listening to everywhere, East coast, West Coast, down south, it didn't matter. Because you gotta remember by the time I'm in the fifth grade and I'm listening to too short or if it's EZE or this NWA, it's almost making me feel like I've been to L.A. Of course I've never been there, but this is where I could sit in my room and imagine,

yo, this is what L.A. like, the lowriders, the cars, the paint jobs, the gold Dayton's,

the corner stores. Wow, they're painting the picture of what L.A. is like through rap.

Through music. Wow. So you're, okay, so your, you just turned, how would you, I just saw that you just had your 50th, right? Just celebrated my 50th. 50th. 50th. Happy birthday. Happy, 50th is a big deal, man, to go through it. I think after like 30, everything's by decades. You celebrate every 10 years, 40, 50, 60. Why not? Why not? Yeah, yeah, fuck it. Why not? Celebrate it. But if you're in fifth grade, fifth grade is what? You're 10, 11 years old. So that's 39 years ago. 39 years ago is late 80s? Gotta be. Late 80s? Because Tupac hasn't come out yet late 80s.

No, no, no, no. Tupac hasn't come out yet. So really it was about, it was about YOM TV Raps. Right. You know, those videos. So after school, I would, as soon as we got out of school at 2.30, boom. I may have had 30 minutes to get home before your MTV Raps came on.

Everything that came on.

Everything that was on there, I was a fan of.

If it's East Coast, if it's Tribe Carquest, Buster Rhymes,

lead other new school, public enemy, L.L., whatever it is.

You know what I'm saying?

Because I'm fell in love with it for the music,

the creative expression, the fashion, everything,

the videos, the artwork, the graffiti, the cars.

That shit grabbed me from every, it was like an octopus.

And was it sudden, like, in fifth gradeish?

It was already gone from, you know, me first hearing music. What are, for me, there's three songs I listen to where I, you know, all of a sudden I had to stop. I'm like, I cannot believe I'm hearing a voice like this. But what was it for you? Maybe one the hip-hop songs where you listen to, you're like, this is just different than anything else I've ever heard of my life, especially when you were young. It was phenomenal. It was amazing. So growing up in my

household, my mom played Johnny Taylor every weekend. Every time we was in a car, we listened to music.

So I was just exposed to music from before I could even recall.

So when you listen to my sounds, the Maybach music, live instrumentation, feeling,

that expensive orchestra-filling sound, that's what that come from.

Me listening to old soulful music, R&B, that was before I could even talk.

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