My teammates and my roommates they was calling me “Dolla.”
They would always say that just ‘cause.
I think it’s common for people named Dame, people to say “Dame Dolla.”
So when I was tryna figure out what I was gonna call myself as a rapper I didn’t wanna
just be "Dame Dolla."
I made a acronym of it.
And I sat there and I was like, “What would make sense?"
"What could I make of it?”
And I came up with “Different On Levels the Lord Allows.”
I feel like that fit perfect, ‘cause I really feel that way about myself.
I had been trying to figure out what song I was gonna do with Wayne.
‘Cause I wanted to make sure I sent him something that was high-quality.
We kind of just brainstormed with each other and bounced some ideas off each other.
The way our conversations go it just let me know that he respects me as an artist.
Not just as a good basketball player.
You know, he’s called me and ran ideas by me.
Like, “What you think about this?”
Or, “What you think about that?”
He makes it easy for me to just be comfortable with the fact that this Lil Wayne.
When I thought about a puzzle before it gets put together.
It’s pieces all over the place.
Like, you gotta make it fit.
That’s what I felt like my situation was in real life.
Everything wasn’t together.
I went to three different high schools and it was a lot that I had to figure out.
My rap name is "Dame D.O.L.L.A," but it's not about the dollar sign.
I don’t live a flashy life.
I don’t talk about the kind of money I make.
The best thing about the financial side is that I can do whatever I want, whenever I want.
I can take care of my family.
When people have issues that I love, I can help them out.
So, obviously, everything that I do, I want to be compensated for it.
I have changed in my lines where I’ll say something slick like that, that I know people
gonna take and run with it.
It might not be the coldest bar, but they gonna hear it
and be like, “Ooh, that was slick.”
Everything that I have, wasn’t nobody giving me no handouts or nobody wasn’t looking
out trying to make nothing easier for me.
You can’t take nothing away from the grind and the process that I had to go
through to be where I am.
That was a baby flex.
When you somebody, I don’t go nowhere by myself like that.
I always got a few of my cousins with me. My brother.
You know it’s to the point now if we go somewhere they be like, “Oh Dame, who with you?”
And I be like, “Right here.”
And it’s like we move on through and we get to where we going.
When I was broke and I didn’t have a lot of money, I look better now with money.
‘Cause I can take care of myself better.
That’s just another flex.