Taz Taylor has always been more than just a producer. From selling his first beat online for $250, to landing his first placement with Desiigner and then creating Internet Money, there was always a craving to create something more than just the next big hit. Hailing from Jacksonville, Florida, the 29-year-old has gone about asserting himself as a pillar and champion of the underground rap scene in America. He hasn’t always been quiet about this; public issues with record labels and the music industry, on the whole, have made him a target of some industry elites who don’t like his outspokenness. On the other hand, he is a hero to an entire generation of creatives, who see his commitment to greatness and creativity as pure inspiration.
Despite coming into notability first as an out-and-out producer, these days Taz is much more. His role is impossible to define with just one word. Essentially, he helps artists and producers alike in realising their potential in any and every way necessary. A common trend throughout his career has been his ability to drag someone from the underground into the mainstream spotlight they deserve. Whether this is by helping curate their beat selection, offering writing advice on a track that is almost a hit, or even helping with their wardrobe, Taz doesn’t care.
Internet Money was born out of a necessity to provide a brand infrastructure to support and platform these artists Taz believes in. Having had first-hand experience with the ease at which the industry would manipulate young producers, Taz made it his mission to support and guide talented kids across the USA properly. The result is a collective of over 30 producers who between them have 59 platinum plaques, 33 gold plaques, and 14 Billboard #1 hits since their inception in 2017.
With Taz out of the USA for the first time in his life, I decided it was important to seize this opportunity to talk to a certified disruptor in the music industry face to face. Making the long journey to Ladbroke Grove from East London, I was hopeful the conversation would be as honest and insightful as possible. Taz did not disappoint at all. We sat down in SARM Studios, an iconic spot previously graced by legends such as Paul McCartney and Beyonce, to talk all things music.
Is this your first time out here? You’ve been here before?
“It’s my first time. My first time leaving the country actually. I just got my passport like two weeks ago. So I’m excited. This is the longest flight I’ve ever been on but it’s fine, I’m fucking with it. Everything is different out here.”
Yeah, definitely. Why was London the first place you had to hit up?
“To work. Label working. We were in with Digga D. We’re working with Pink Pantherness, Arrdee, M Huncho, Potter Payper, AJ Tracey. So yeah we’re working.”
OK, cool. So that’s that’s a nice little mix. You’ve got some of the drill guys here, some of the trap guys as well. Is there like a particular movement out here which you’re a fan of?
“No, I’m just kind of like getting tapped in you know? Molly (His manager) is from out here and the label are from out here, so they’re always been heavy on the UK shit telling me I need to come out here. And then I’ve been like meeting with the label people over here.
“So when things finally opened it up so I could come over here, I was like, fuck it, this is the first place I’m going. Yeah, whenever Australia opens, I’m going too, it’s crazy over there for Internet Money as well.”
Yeah for sure, the music scene is going off in Australia at the moment as well. So now come to the world’s opening up again, you’re just trying to broaden your horizons a bit and tap into some of these emerging markets?
“Yeah, because I did so much crazy shit in the USA stuff and I never been able to leave. And now it’s just like being over here, I don’t even want to listen to like American music in London because it just feels slow. You feel me? I’m interested to see how I’m going to take the vibe back back home, and do something with it over there.”
Yeah, for sure. Because I think over here in the UK, we’re like, we’re very hip to what’s going on in America, Australia as well, to an extent. But then I feel like in America, you don’t necessarily generally have the kind of same awareness of what’s going on in the UK, what’s going on in Australia, what’s going on in the rest of the world? But there’s some there’s some sick stuff going on.
“There be like something that pops out like every once in a while where it’s just like on Twitter, like Instagram or like Akademiks or something is talking about some UK artists or some Australian artists, talking about what’s going on. But they won’t really hear too much about it. Whenever people talk about Drill and stuff really they’re just talking about New York.”
Let’s start off with your personal journey then. Where are you from and when did you first start making beats?
“I’m from Jacksonville, Florida. I started making beats when I was like 18.”
Ok so break down the last 11 years – what has that journey been like?
“It started off with me just making type beats on YouTube for a while. Uh, that was just all by myself. I was like making all the beats and like the drum kits and doing all that shit branding. And then I decided to do the Internet Money shit where it’s like everybody all together, and I kind of took a step back from being a hands on making beats producer.
“Yeah, and kind of like took a step forward in the direction of like being a leader, trying to help everybody else out. Like I’ll be on the phone with people for like three hours trying to help them figure out like their next move, type shit, know what direction they want to take, who they want to get in with it, going through their beats and all that type shit. We’re setting up sessions with them, giving them references, making their Spotify playlist.
Say, like Tecca, right? I’m doing everything for him, going through all his songs, bringing together the fucking tracklist, getting the features done, negotiating the future prices. This is like shit I shouldn’t be doing.”
When you’re working with those like kind of hidden talents, you know, new people you come across what’s like the main kind of thing which you feel like you need to help them with first?
“I think whatever I meet people in general, it doesn’t matter like who it is, I have like a vision for them. I mean, I see who they are.
Yeah, as I know them over time, I help them become who I see them as. I don’t know how to explain it, but with artists and all that shit. Like when I found iann, his name wasn’t iann, you see what I’m saying? So I just help people whatever they want to do, however they want to get there, I help them with that type of shit.”
So how does a producer go from working in Wal-Mart in Middle America or something, then being flown out to L.A to work with you. How does that happen?
“So my job is just to listen to music, and I’m just opinionated. That’s my job now. Once I like something I like, John Hicks, my A&R, he’s the one I rely on to go and get shit done. So for example, Dro Kenji, right? I had a 45 minute drive and I was like, Yo, John, send me a playlist. I’m going to sign one artist today, and he is like, ‘say less’, and he just has them right, ready to go for moments like that because I got to be wanting to listen to music.
“So I was just in the car, I heard this Dro Kenji song called “Finished” and I heard it once and I was like, ‘Oh shit, it’s hard’. I ran it back, and then I just called John. I said, ‘Get him out here tomorrow’.
“He had just turned 18. He just popped up the next day. That’s it. I don’t know how they get here, I don’t know what the process is, I don’t care. Use my car, do whatever it is, get them out here. And then my assistant had to pay for my electricity at my house because we were just moving to a new house.
“He basically slept in the studio for two weeks because I had no electricity. He just made a bunch of songs and I was like, ‘Well, you’re probably not going home’, and he didn’t go home for a long time until, he already had a deal and all that. You know what I mean?
“It was pretty much the same thing with iann like, I flew in January 30th first, so I’m saying, and by 45 days, he had a whole deal and everything. The day before I met him, he was working at UPS the day before or FedEx or whatever. In Forty five days you go from packing boxes and shipping boxes, to having a whole ass recording contract and being an artist about to play your first tour. Doing real crazy shit.”
Such a big part of that has to be the internet, right?
“Yeah for sure. I also think it’s just our reach. We all support these artists together, help with the music and help with the beats or whatever. But it’s also like helping people pick out clothes and Instagram shit, putting them around certain people, and just helping songs happen. Like “romance 361” with iann was with PNB Rock when no even knew who iann was.
“He was just in the studio, PNB heard and was like ‘yeah I fuck with him’. And then I was like, ‘Yo, I got this song I think you should get on’. He’s like, ‘Yeah, fuck I, I’ll do it. And then the next day we just dropped it. I know he was like, ‘What the fuck?’. But I didn’t care. We just did it. Obviously, whenever we did the deal, we had to fix that whole situation. But that’s that’s what I’m saying, we don’t ask, we don’t care. We just do it.
“That’s how you have to be, though, because like whenever you move them over to a label or whatever it is, it’s a fucking process you got if you want to put it out. If I wanted to put an album out today, I couldn’t. I’ve have to submit it today with like the songs mixed and mastered and the cover art done at least a month in advance.
And how do you feel about that? Is that just frustrating for you?
“I hate it. Yeah. Yeah, its annoying and it slows down the process, of course. Like Tecca’s album came out right, he was like man, this shit should have dropped when “Never Left” was going crazy. But his album wasn’t done! Yeah I mean, even that process, like mixing and whatever. If it’s easy for fans to get music with the click of a fucking button, it should be just as easy for artists to give it to them. We shouldn’t have to wait a month and a half for fucking playlisting.”
So do you think the music industry kind of needs to catch up then, maybe it’s a bit outdated?
“The whole industry side of shit is just so outdated. I feel like the technology is there too, so there’s no excuse. Apple Music’s doing this thing where fans could listen on seven different speakers at one time. Like Kanye just came out with the shit so you can hear just the acapella. The technology for the fans so far advanced, but the technology for the creatives is just so slow.
“Think of it like this – if I want to put a song out, like I just said, I got to submit it a month in advance and with an album it’s the same thing. But it’s probably even longer because I want a single before. I’m saying if I can’t put an album out till a month from now, I won’t get paid on that album ten months till after it’s released. See what I’m saying. 10 months?!”
Yeah. And I guess, you know, things are different now. You know, you got money, you know, you can probably deal with that. If you’re a young upcoming artist, you don’t want to wait ten/twelve months.
“Exactly, that’s what I’m saying. That’s why there’s like a resurgence of the underground shit, right? Because they can just upload a song tomorrow and fans are getting fed more. I feel like like when artists keep music from their fans for a year or whatever, that’s how leaks happen, that’s how all that shit happens. You just feed your fans now.
“No one really knows like what a hit record is anymore. Like you could be like ‘Yeah, it sounds like a hit’. But in today’s standards bro, the people decide the hit records, like with TikTok and shit.
“I could just do my job and I get it to sound like what I like. Sounds great, but ultimately like the song that went up on Tecca’s album, “Lot of Me”, that was a song that was off the album until like the last day. You see what I’m saying? And even him, he’s like, ‘Man, I hate that song’. And it turned out to be the biggest one!”
So what do you think creatives can do to kind of counteract this? Is it always going to be a slow process?
“Yeah, it’s always going to be slow until they fix it. There’s nothing you can do because at some point you can’t do it on your own. What are you going to do, Distrokid it? Like that’s not gonna work. Some artists can’t even legally release music without their label’s consent.”
Earlier on, we were talking about how you haven’t sat down and made a beat for a long time.
“Yeah I haven’t since “We Love You Tecca”, the first one. Yeah, it’s been a minute.”
Yeah. So you know, you would you kind of describe yourself really as like an A&R now? You’ve got lots of artists underneath you who you guide and direct.
“I just look at it like I’m actually producing, you know, when people are like, there’s beat makers and producers, I’m just a producer. I’m arranging records, I’m picking shit out. I’ll go have people rewrite the song. I’ll help you write the song. I’ve written full songs that went like four or five times platinum. So it’s like, how can you tell me how to make music? That’s my job. Like, Kanye is not in there making the beats. He’ll go in there and chop chop up some samples and do something crazy though maybe.”
I feel like people always try and get onto Kanye for that as evidence he’s not as legendary as some of his fans claim.
“But a lot of people don’t know or understand. I mean, like, there’s always people working on shit, like for me to run Internet Money, handle all the artists that I handle. I have a son. I’m a I’m a boyfriend, whatever. Like, I have a life. I can’t sit there and make beats all day and then go to the studio.
“I wake up at 5:30 every morning. Go to bed at midnight. 11. If I’m lucky enough, 9pm sometimes. But yeah, I mean, once you get very successful as a producer, you could just have people working for you because it’s so much easier to get shit done and you can get more bigger shit done for them while they’re working on the shit that you’re setting up.”
I want to talk about the internet money house. Obviously not a thing anymore, but I think it was a really interesting concept to create a collective and house them in all the same place. What was the inspiration behind it?
“Uh, just seeing FAZE do it on the other side. Yeah, I’ve always looked at Internet Money as like the FAZE for the music industry.”
Talk to me more about that.
“Same way we’re producers, they’re gamers. I mean, like some of the people who you wouldn’t consider to be initially cool, producers are kind of also in that box. Put them all together. Just have people come to make music and have it out the house.
“The problem with that is is, Internet Money the age groups is like, 18-29. So I’m saying on this big scale, you got people that still have a mom who does everything for them, and they come to a house with grown ass men that have like whole ass families and then they like piss on the floors. Leave shit everywhere, don’t clean up, don’t take the trash out, run out of toilet paper.
“Okay, so just imagine like living in that environment. Yeah, bring in your kid and then bringing your girlfriend into that environment, your mom walking through the house, there’s no furniture because fucking people want to wrestle and play around and break it. Yeah, it’s weird. It’s like 3:00 a.m, we’re trying to sleep, and all I can hear is beats because underneath me is nothing but studio.
It was fun, it’s cool to like, be around everybody, you know, we would hotbox the garage everyday. It was cool and the concept was cool, but it only works if you’re willing to spend the money and you’re just living in the present. You want to order some groceries. You might order three hundred dollars worth of groceries. You put that shit in the fridge. The time you wake up tomorrow morning it’s gone. They don’t care if your name’s on it. If your pictures on it, if you spit on it, if you drink out of it, it’s getting used. They don’t care. It’s for the streets. Anything in that fridge was for the streets.”
Fair enough. What was your craziest memory at the house, would you say if there’s one particular one? Because it just sounds like a general madness.
“Uh, Christmas Day. I was riding Nick’s scooter and I hit a fuckin speed bump. Because, you know, the new AirPods Max pros go over your head. Yeah, yeah, I was wearing them, but they’re mad nice. They cancel the fucking noise out. I’m riding a scooter in the hills and Hollywood downhill. I’m like, hold on. What if a car is coming? And I look back and then I let go with one hand and I hit a speed bump and I landed on my teeth and fucked my whole face up and had to spend $75 grand on new veneers.”
Now, I saw an interview with MTV. You’re comparing yourself to Kanye in a sense, talking about how you relate to his vision of going from a producer to an artist to a mogul. Talk to me about that.
“At the end of day, I know that everybody kind of wakes up with that same feeling like we haven’t done enough. So, yeah, I just bought a house. I just bought a Rolls Royce, thats like Top CEO level, I’m chilling, but like in my head, I’m hungry, I still want to do more.
“Bro, the person I was two years ago, I could fucking pull up a picture of me on Google and show you like, I’m a completely different person. I just been trying to grow more. I’m turning 29, but I feel like I’m twenty two. Because I didn’t leave Jacksonville until I was 22 when I had just had a kid. My kids now turning seven. So it’s like I was a dad, I didn’t really like have chance to get out into the world out here, and explore or buy the clothes I want. Or go work with who I want, and do whatever I want. You know what I mean? I’ve always had to like, cater to somebody or do something, I had responsibilities I had to stick to.”
So you weren’t able to be focused on your own personal growth. And now you are.
“Yeah exactly. Facts. That’s the difference. In fact, like now, whenever I’m in L.A, I wake up every day and I go to the gym. I smoke a fucking nice joint as I go into the gym, I run like four/five miles a day in the gym and I come home shower, do my whole skincare facial routine. She (his girlfriend) got me lit over here! Then I go to my office. We just got an office in L.A. Crazy. Like four studios, we’re doing all that, you know? I mean, so it’s like I’m now developing like a daily routine, taking care of myself personally. You go look at my face, like I never wash my face before I got with her.”
Break down to me why Kanye was that original role model to you.
“He’s just the person that made me realise that people actually make beats. Because I grew up and my dad was a drummer in the band and I learned about music at three or four whenever I was around them at band practice. My dad was like, very still is like a die hard like Kiss fan, you know the band? So like he had like a Kiss room, like the doors and the DVDs and the CDs. And the VHS’ and the drum set.
“So I never realized that it was just like a guy with a fucking MPC just making the beats. I’m always used to seeing a band of people coming together to make music. The minute that I seen Kanye flip in like samples like Chaka Khan, it was crazy. I knew who Chaka Khan was, but then I heard “Through the Wire”. I’m like, damn, I thought at that moment, he must of had someone come in and re sing this at a higher pitch. That’s hard. And then like, I remember seeing something on MTV too of like him with an MPC 2000. Just going crazy. I’m like, that’s it. Yeah, that’s crazy.
“So at that moment I just got hit. Then I remember listening to every biggie song, and then you know, you got to learn about Tupac. And then I’m sitting there listening to fucking KRS one and Mf Doom. Yeah, I’m going in the fuckin like the boom bap shit with fucking J Dilla and fucking peanut butter wolf. And what’s all the shit they doing in fucking Minnesota? I’m just going crazy on my music shit, you know what I mean? I tapped in and then I start listening and everything like I grew up around like rock. So obviously I know, like Def Leppard, everything to the classic rock. I know Elvis shit. I know old shit like Buddy Holly. I dropped out of school in the seventh grade in the same way that y’all can sit here and do division. I can’t, but I can sit here and tell you music. Like, I just filled all that knowledge in my brain.
“So I just know the history is shit and like that. One thing about music is it’s never going to change. They’re not going to add like a new a new chord to music. It’s the same like 12. It just you got to keep finding ways to reinvent it and make it new. And as you can see, they make different genres. They just do different BPMs and they might like switch up their instruments or switch up like some key sounds. But it’s all the same chords, it’s all the same progressions, it’s all the same instruments in some way or the other.
“So it’s like you just got to keep finding ways to reinvent them sounds and reuse them. And if you know the history of music and how they’ve done it throughout time, you can do that forward because like, say, like I got I got Paryo who’s signed to me and Nick, right, he’s like 17. We were doing like a music tribute, and he doesn’t know like, no Britney Spears music. No Backstreet Boys. Like none of that shit. They don’t even know that and that was the biggest music from the year they were born. So they don’t know fucking nothing about the 90s. They don’t know nothing about the Smashing Pumpkins. Nothing about about the Foo Fighters from the 90s or Nirvana.
“They don’t know anything. So I be giving them playlists, putting them onto shit. They think that all their favourite artists were just like the most creative people in the world. But they don’t realise like most of the shit that you hear is inspired off of something else. So if you just go get it direct from the source, you can get the same inspiration.”
Do you kind of see music as an ecosystem everyone participates in? Everyone takes inspiration from everywhere and uses it (or should) to create their own distinct sound.
“It’s like a symbiotic thing, like everyone helps each other grow. Nobody is unique, right? It’s like painting, they don’t invent new colours, they use the same reds, same yellows, to paint all different pictures. Everyone says to me I’m doing complete unique shit that has never been done before. But the truth is like, it’s been done before. I’m just doing it in a different time period bro.”
That’s interesting, cause I feel like most people these days are obsessed with saying they are original or one of a kind.
“No, I don’t care about that. Yeah, actually, I’d rather say I’m not original, and actually show you where I grab my inspiration. I think that’s more impressive.”
So there was some murmurs that you do not live shows?
“Yeah it’s not me. There’s some bags to get. You can go get some money going to do that, for sure. But it’s like I got anxiety where I’m antisocial. Like, I don’t talk, I’m alone and I don’t talk to nobody. I do nothing. I sit in my house, I just want to smoke and chill. Yeah. So I don’t like going out, I’m afraid to fucking answer the door for the post, but, I have to have her do it.
“Yeah, and that’s always been like forever, because I dropped out of school in the seventh grade, and I wasn’t around people much. So I’m awkward when I talk to people and a lot of people interpret my awkwardness as rudeness. But I’m the most awkward. I’m actually a sensitive person.
“People were like, what’s your set looking like? Oh, no, I’m not doing that. You ain’t never going to see me doing something that’s not me, just for some money or something. I never going to hold my tongue. I did an album, but then people are like, Oh, Internet Money is an artist. And I’m like, No, no, no, no. Hold up, hold up. I’m not a fucking artist like, I’m not going to get out here and go do a fucking tour where I’m like, the Chainsmokers fucking deejay shit. They try to set it up and they hated it. I didn’t want to do it.”
Of course, of course. Let’s talk about the process of making B4 The Storm then, it must have been a mad two weeks.
“I wasn’t eating for two weeks. In like a two month span, I lost like 80 pounds or 60 pounds. It was crazy. I was working too hard, I was doing keto. Everybody was getting snapped at. I wasn’t happy at all. Fucking depressed. I was doing an album, doing sessions, just trying to get shit done.”
So when you look back on that period, how do you remember it?
“Like a blur, actually. Yeah, I think I was just like because I was high as fuck when I announced I’m doing an album on Twitter. And then like news people started picking it up and shit, and I was like, oh, fuck. Like, I don’t even have an album. I guess I’m doing one.
“And then the next day I hit my A&R Matt and I’m like, Matt, can you do me a favour and send me every song I ever did at the studio. I went through the songs and there was a song that me, Jozzy and Johnny Yukon wrote called “Lemonade”. Yeah. And we wrote it, you know, I mean, me her and him, we wrote it. October 2017. And she’s an artist as well so she put it out and we let her put it out, everything like that.
“But in that folder as well, I did a couple of sessions with Don early on when he signed to the same publishing label as me. I was like Don, you’d sound really great on this if you cut this. And I think he just cut it just to like, get me to shut up or some shit. So I just heard the vocals for the first time. I was like, Damn well. So Alec quick dollars, right? And I was with high, but I said, bro, grab the guitar and I just got the acapella and we just started. And in the next hour, “Lemonade” was made. That was the start of the album. The adrenaline off of making lemonade really just made me want to finish the whole album.
“Every day was like, Whoa, what the fuck we’re going to do now? What’s on the agenda today? What’s going to happen now?”
So that set the tone for the next few weeks. Do you think the project could have been made if it hadn’t started that way?
“No, probably not. I think I just would have not done it bro, to be honest with you, but I’m glad I did. And like to be like like, well, we did thirty five thousand first week which is more than most major artists.”
Did it open doors for you?
“Yeah of course. It made people notice us and wonder who we are. People started to fuck with us for that reason.”
Obviously we have to talk about “Lemonade” and what that song did for you. Absolute international smash hit. Talk to me about that song and what it’s effects were for you
“Lemonade” went crazy. It made us immediately realise like, Yo, maybe we are an artist, maybe we can do that it. So we’ve just been like trying to figure out what ways we want to take it. Most people, whenever they come in the game before they even have a hit record, they know who they are. They know what they want to do with their sound. Who their inspirations are that they want to work with, who they want next to their name.
“We were just like ‘yo, we’re Internet Money and we work with everyone’. Now people only give me demos that sound great for Don Toliver. But I’m not fucking Don Toliver’s producer, bro. You know what I mean? They think our sound is just using a guitar. Because of that, I’ve been banning guitars for the last 9 months.”
Is it important to how you people receive your music and what they do with it? Do you think artists downplay how much they care?
“Yeah. Because they don’t want to act like they care because it’s like, ‘I’m cool I don’t care’. But for me, like I just told you, like, like I cry over music, like I live over music. Like, I don’t have family like that. Like, I relate more to music than I relate to like friends and family like, I live for this shit.
“Yeah. So it means a little more to me, of course. So, yeah, of course. Of course I care how people interpret it. Like, I’ve worked for this my whole life. I did this shit my whole life. Of course I care about it.”
I think one thing I’ve noticed being a common theme listening to you, watching you in interviews and talking about your process of making music is that you’re really careful to not overthink things.
You want to kind of keep it creative, keep it simple, keep it organic. Do you think that some artists, you know, potentially great artists crippled themselves by overthinking?
“Yeah of course, but if they didn’t, I wouldn’t have a job. That’s my job. Yeah, I’m kind of like a therapist, right? What people don’t realise is like, if I’m doing that for everyone, I’m helping everyone, who’s doing that for me? This (points to his joint). I smoke so much weed bro and I don’t even know what I’m thinking. Yeah. Like, whenever you ask a question, it’s not like I’m formulating an answer. I’m just sitting here and I speak and it just comes out. And as I’m talking, I’m like, I’m watching the words fly out. I’ll never know what I’m saying. It’s always just how I’m feeling at the moment.
“Like, I’m a I’m a product of my environment, like I grew up in a shitty situation. I mean, I come from like Jacksonville bum fucking Florida. Who the fuck can point out that on a map? There’s a lot of negative people in my family. So that rubs off on me. I’m negative by nature. But I’ve been trying to grow and like, be positive and like, be a better person.”
Would you describe yourself as being directly in opposition to the music industry?
“No, no, no. Because I am a label too.”
So are you trying to kind of help from the inside then would you say?
“Yeah. Well, I do things differently than most people. You don’t see me, it’s not Taz Taylor featuring Don Toliver its Internet Money. I don’t like doing interviews. I don’t like doing video shit, even the shows, I was supposed to go on tour with a whole ass artist lineup and everything like open up type shit, be a deejay. I can’t do all that because I don’t like being an artist. You don’t see the guy from Netflix on the beginning of every TV show that’s on the same day. But you know, he exists.”
I was curious because obviously you’ve been nominated for a Grammy. I was wondering how proud of a moment that was for you.
“No, I got it. Yeah, I got a little certificate. It’s cool to show people. I remember telling my manager on the phone, like, he’s like, ‘Yo, how far you want to take this?’ I said, ‘Y’all I want to give my mom’s a gold record’. That’s all I want. But now I’ve got a gold record. It’s like, alright, well, I’m still in a shitty place. Like, I thought having a gold record would fix all my problems. Well, put me in a better place. I’d be in a better position in life.
“But it’s like now I still got to go record. I’ve had platinum records. I don’t feel anything. Diamond records. I don’t feel anything. So it’s like there comes a point like, what am I chasing? And overall, it’s just the music. No matter how big the accolades are, it’s not what you’re chasing.”
Finally, where do you see yourself in five years?
“I don’t know. Five years ago, internet money wasn’t even a thing. We could crash and burn. I could fucking fall off. You never know. But I just like that excitement. I don’t know. There’s a reason why I keep going. If I knew I wouldn’t want to do this shit I would find something else. The next five years, I don’t know, maybe have a couple more kids as well. My son in the next five years, he’s going to hit like his teenage years. That’s exciting.
“I can say that I’m wanting to get into the tech field. I want to start a whole tech company aside from it. I’m helping Nick get his own like internet money off the ground, and I kind of want to gravitate more towards like doing that for the other members as well, kind of giving them their own labels, helping them get their shit started.
“Anything I want to do, I can do it. If you’re sitting here reading this interview you’re probably in a better position than I was when I was your age. If I went on to go make something great and I dropped out of school in the seventh grade, I don’t have no high school diploma, no nothing, had a kid at twenty two. I lived in my mom’s house, I didn’t have credit. I didn’t have nothing. Why can’t you do it?”