- [Off camera] This going to be on TV, y'all.
- [Off camera] You're going to be on TV again?
- It's going to be MTV.
- [Off camera] At what time?
- I have no idea yet.
- [Off camera] You gonna be on TV?
- [Off camera] You stayin' up here?
- Huh?
- [Off camera] You stayin' in Detroit?
- I don't stay — well, I don't stay here no more.
I used to stay right down the block.
- On what street?
- Dresden.
- Oh, I've heard! [crowd murmuring]
- Right over there.
- Why you move?
- Huh?
- Why you move?
- 'Cause I rap now.
- [Off camera] Yo, man, this is gonna be f—ing great.
You know that, don't you?
- Yeah, this s—t will be hot.
- [Off camera] It's so great for you to be back here.
- And now that you've seen Cancún and L.A.,
I mean, wouldn't you rather be someplace warmer,
or do you, like, relate to the frigidity up here?
- I'm just used to this. I'm used to it.
It's like — not that it's, like, fun.
You know, you just get used to something.
- Yeah.
- And you just get settled in, and you just wanna stay.
- So, you're a Detroiter for life, pretty much?
- Yeah, I'm a Detroiter for life.
[Radio playing]
- And where are we headed for?
- Um, we're gonna go to my old house,
and I'm gonna knock on the door
and I'll see if I can get in
because I left something in my room.
- [Laughs] OK, what part of town is this? Is this in —
- This will be the east side of Detroit.
- Alright.
Do you have a lot of warm memories about growing up there?
- Yeah, a lot of fun stuff.
- Now, if one of your fans was coming to Detroit,
where's a place they could go at night to maybe bump into you?
Do you go out a lot?
- I would say, like, Saint Andrew's Hall, on Friday night.
- Mhm. - Saint Andrew's Hall, or —
Yo, Paul, what's the other places that we used —
I used to go to the Café Mahogany.
- You're probably pretty well accepted
in these places by now, right, I imagine?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah. It was when I first started out,
when I first showed up, you know,
when I first started grabbing mics
in little clubs and stuff like that.
- What makes people from Detroit different
than people from other cities, would you say?
Is there a certain kind of person that lives in Detroit?
- What makes people from Detroit different?
- Yeah.
- Just because, like, in our city, we don't —
there's not a whole lot to do, so people are like —
there's not a lot here, you know?
We're just starting to get things here,
so it's, like, you know,
there's a lot of tension in this city. - Yeah.
I used to sell my tapes, my local tapes,
up in that store right there,
Golden Jet Records, right there.
[Laughs]
Excuse us.
I used to go up here and pass out flyers for my —
when I used to paint on clothes,
pass out flyers everywhere.
And plus, when I used to do talent shows and stuff,
at other schools, I would come up here
and pass out flyers for those, too.
This used to be a store called A.O. Price.
I used to go up here every day.
My mother used to give me $2 for cigarettes.
I used to go up to the store, steal the cigarettes,
and keep the money for lunch the next day. - [Laughs]
Those days are over.
- Those days were great days.
- I mean, really? Did you enjoy them, were you having fun?
- Yeah, now that I look back on it, I mean —
- Yeah.
- I kinda miss it.
This is the house.
See back there, there used to be a garage. - Yeah.
We had our garage burn down.
- Alright. Well, let's see what's happening here.
They fixed the place up. - Yeah!
- They've been shoveling the snow.
- Actually doesn't look that bad. - No.
[knocking on door]
- Let's see if anybody's here.
- If they're not, we'll try the back.
- [Chuckles] We'll break in. - [Laughs]
- If not, we'll just take a look ourselves.
Now, if it were me, I would have let you in, because you —
- Excuse me. - [Distant yelling]
- Huh? - [Distant yelling]
- You have what?
- [Behind door] I have not cleaned the house.
- Oh, that's alright.
- What if we take a look in the backyard?
Can we do that?
- [Behind door] Yeah, go ahead.
- Alright, thank you. - Oh!
- Do you remember the backyard?
- Yeah.
- Did you have, like, swings
and stuff in the backyard? Or —
- Yeah, we used to have this one little swing.
- Uh-huh. - It was right there.
Then, this is where the garage used to be,
- This used to be, like, a little thing for the birds,
but it was always empty.
- Yeah.
Was your family pretty happy when they were living here?
Relatively speaking.
- It was alright, it was alright.
It was just me, my mom, and my little brother.
- Yeah.
So you write all your stuff down beforehand, right?
I mean, the writing is really important, obviously.
You're not just freestyling all of this.
- No, no, no.
Much thought goes into everything that I do.
- Mhm. - Much thought, you know.
I try to make — I'm conscious of, like, every line that I write
A lot of rappers don't wanna,
or just a lot of groups, in general,
don't wanna burn bridges. - Yeah.
Like, I don't wanna say this about this person
because — "What if I meet them?" Or whatever, whatever.
You know, I don't think like that.
I think, like, if there's a reason for me to burn a bridge,
then I obviously don't wanna speak to you
ever in my life, you know? - [Laughs]
So it's like, if I feel a certain way,
then I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna express it.
- Yeah. - And I think a lot of people hold back,
and I just don't hold back.
There's a school right down here. - Mhm.
It's called Osborn.
I didn't go to Osborn. It's like two blocks,
three blocks — about two blocks down. - Mhm.
I didn't go to Osborn, but I used to go —
I used to walk to this other school.
It was like a mile and a half, close to two miles away,
because when we came up from Kansas City,
we used to stay with my grandmother.
My grandmother used to live on the other side of 8 Mile [Road].
- Yeah. - On Warren.
So, I started going to that school,
and, like, it was the longest I'd ever went to a school,
like, six months, so I started making friends,
and it was real hard for me to make friends
when I was little, you know. - How come?
- I mean, we changed schools a lot.
- Mhm. - Like, we would change schools.
The longest I had been in a school was, like, three months.
- Wow. - Just growing up, but
as soon as we had moved up
back from Kansas City, I believe I was, like, 11,
we had moved in with my grandmother
and I started going to that school down there.
I might have been 12.
I got tired of getting up every morning,
and my mother wouldn't drive me to school,
I would have to walk to school.
So, you know, like, in the winter time, it was cold, you know?
So, I just would skip school.
I just didn't wanna go.
And then I figured, like, I just want to rap.
I just want to rap. - Mhm.
he's a rapper, too. His name's Proof.
He used to take me up in the lunchroom at Osborn,
and, like, the kids would just, like, bet money and stuff.
Like, we used to battle. I used to battle,
like, a lot of kids in the school,
a lot of other rappers and stuff. - Mhm.
I used to rap really fast,
and I don't think I was really saying much.
- [Laughs]
- But I was just rapping really fast, you know?
But 'cause I was rapping fast, everybody just —
I used to win every battle, like, you know. - [Laughs]
- 'Cause it was just rap, like [gibbering],
and other kids were rhyming slow, so — - [Laughs]
You know, I figured the faster you rap, the better you was.
- So life is better now, right?
- Yeah, life is definitely better now. - [Laughs]
- I really don't — I don't want it to get much better.
- [Laughs]
- Because then, I won't have anything to rap about if it does,
you know?
- That could be a problem.
What would happen if it just got so good
that there was nothing bad to say anymore?
Then the ballads would come out?
- Yeah, then the love songs. - [Laughs]