In my city?
What this R&B shit?
Yeah.
I'm the best.
It took a while for me to really embrace my role.
I was waiting for everybody to say, "Oh, I fuck with Sir."
And da, da, da, da, da.
I'm waiting for the stamp, but if I don't stand for myself or believe in myself, who
the fuck is going to believe in me?
I'm confident because I work hard and not because I'm just blindly confident.
Faith without works is dead.
I feel like I put in a lot of time and I have a lot of faith in myself because I work hard.
So yeah, I'm the best.
The main moment that brought about this song was just me being on the road and being unsure,
and being not as confident as I should have been.
I was on the championship tour at the time and I had my little setup on the road just
trying to stay busy and working.
The lineup of my label, it's intimidating sometimes.
Yeah, I was definitely going through it at that specific moment.
I got a Kendrick Lamar verse on this song.
Kendrick Lamar is on this song.
Because of who he is to me, it was such an easy call.
He was very instrumental and helped me put the whole album together.
When I trust you, I got a million questions for you.
And I definitely wasn't afraid to ask this time around, and I asked for help, in so many
different ways.
And of course always wanted Kendrick to be a part and put a verse on it.
But, this kind of happened seamlessly.
I can't even really give you a straightforward answer, because it just kind of happened.
I rep for the West Coast, but when I say the Westside, I mean the Westside of Los Angeles.
LA has a real divide of Eastside to Westside.
If you ask somebody from the Eastside, they probably going to say the divide starts on
Broadway, or something like that.
If you ask somebody from the Westside, our divide starts at Figueroa.
The Westside is just my territory.
That's where I went to school, it's where I grew up, it's where my daddy grew up, where
my mama grew up, and we're really from there and we have so many roots, grounded in that
community.
I'll always represent my city in everything I do.
It's in my handle, most of my songs, you could hear lines and you know exactly where I'm
talking about.
It's just something I'm proud of because I'm from there, and I still go there.
Man, on a good day I'm up and I'm swagging and I got money in my pocket and I'm polite
and I'm agreeable.
People like that kind of stuff.
They like when people are cordial and polite and smile and look you in your eyes.
And I'm definitely that type of person.
I've always been like a, yes ma'am, no ma'am type of cat.
You probably do want to see me on a good day, low key.
But you definitely don't want to be in competition with me on a good day.
On my best day.
Yeah, I'm on my shit probably so it's a problem.
And on a bad day you just don't.
We ain't got to talk about that.
I play basketball.
Yeah.
I still hoop.
I don't hoop as often as I used to, but I still hoop and I feel like can't nobody in
this room guard me.
I love basketball players cause they always do the same thing and ain't nothing wrong
with that.
But you know that I'm confident enough to say that just because I really hoop.
Nobody that hoops says that and gets away with it.
I still got my handle.
I can't shoot because I don't shoot.
And that's a basketball thing too.
A lot of people love to say, "I'm a slept-on artist."
Which that's a whole nother conversation.
But people aren't looking for that much truth in music.
They're just looking for something that feels a certain way or looks a certain way.
But when you really understand where I'm coming from and you listen to what I'm talking about
on these records, you'll get that all I'm doing is speaking my own truth.
I know that people are going to find me.
The people that need to hear it, they're going to find me.
The people that are looking for this, they're going to find me.
What I do to let my hair down is I roll up big fat J of some Skywalker OG.
I roll my shit in a fucking Element.
Have you guys ever heard of Elements?
Yeah, it's rice papers, so really thin joint papers.
And they're the best kind of smoke.
They burn slow if you treat them, I ball it up, I treat it as much as I possibly can to
stretch it out so it burns even slower.
And it's just become habit.
Everybody's watching.
Man, we're in a position now where everybody cares, especially in Cali.
It was huge news around the new signee of TDE when that happened.
Then once I got signed, got a little love, but I felt a lot more hatred than I felt love
at first.
You know what I mean?
Everybody wants to be in that position.
It was millions of motherfuckers that thought they should have been signed to TD and didn't
know how to get to them or blah, blah, blah.
"If I take off my cool."
It's an Andre 3000 reference, man.
I'm so butt hurt because fans are re-posting, "If I take off my coat," and I'm like, "Nah,
I said, cool y'all."
And they like, "Nah.
It say coat.
It say it on Genius.
You check genius?
Can you take it off Genius?"
“Nah, it says, cool, do y'all believe me?"
They're like, "Nah, we listening.
It say coat, don't it?"
I'm like, I guess it says coat then.
If I'm honest with my intentions, will you still be around?
You know what I mean?
That's what that means to me.
If I show you who I really am, will you be cool with that?
Letting Your Hair Down is about being confident and being sure of yourself, for me.
I think in the environment that I've been placed in, a lot of artists have to deal with
the same type of thing that I go through on a daily basis, just being sure of what you're
saying on wax, how it looks when you take pictures.
You know what I mean?
What you're trying to accomplish with your music.
It's a lot of stuff that can have you shaken and deterred from your original plan.
I'm just trying to be myself and be confident that that's the right thing to do.
It definitely did the job because I'm up right now and I'm always smiling then.
And I like this song.
It's a good one.
Before I hoop it's a process.
I don't just go out trying to be 19 year old me anymore.
Six months ago I did some crazy Euro step and made the shot, made a little layup inside
the basket and damn near pulled my whole hamstring out of place man.
And for weeks was walking around with a fat messed up hamstring.