I was a heavy kid, even though I was into sports and very active.

I grew up in a town called Prairie View. It's like 45 minutes outside of Houston.

My mom's an art teacher, so I always had music in the house. She always had records, and I was mesmerized by the mechanics of how a turntable works.

Every now and then there might be a beat someone turned down that I have as an unused beat. But everything that predominantly matches the artist in my 30 years of doing this, it was me walking in and sitting there with no drums, no samples, no nothing, and making a beat on the spot.

I've been sequencing all of my albums, from any Gang Starr stuff to Jeru to Group Home, all of it. I pay a lot of attention to that and really always have. I've even helped sequence friend's projects.

I've always cared about how certain songs fade into other ones and which songs should follow others. I studied that as a consumer and fan before I even got into music.

Actually, for 'Family & Loyalty' I wanted Drake on the track but he was about to go on tour for his Scorpion album, so timewise it wasn't going to work.

I'm not a tough guy, but I'll throw down just like the rest of them if I have to.

I've done some scoring in the past, but I want to get into it on a bigger level - a Danny Elfman level.

It's whatever - people like me and Dre are music people, so we're beyond just hip-hop. We're purists. Not everybody who makes beats is a purist.

With 'Family and Loyalty,' I didn't already have an idea for that video. So I called Fab Five Freddy. I wanted to get a director that I didn't have to explain Gang Starr to and he was with it.

Bad Name' is just that head-nod, traditional loop over a breakbeat, chopped up, and it sounds like the way I do my thing.

I'm passionate about music in general, not just hip-hop. But when it comes to hip-hop, I don't wanna see it die culturally.

The Nike joint 'Classic' with Kanye, Nas, KRS-One, that was a remix - Rick Rubin did the original, and his was a double-time tempo; mine was a regular boom-bap tempo, and they liked it so much that we ended up doing the video to it.

I know what a Gang Starr album that's done is supposed to sound like.

Guru was actually who A&R'd and got Lord Finesse signed because he used to listen to the demos at Wild Pitch. And he was the one who actually said, ‘Yo, this Lord Finesse guy is dope.' And Stuart Fine signed him to Wild Pitch. That's how we became labelmates.

If I feel like something needs to be updated, I'll break my neck to outdo the original.

I would always have turntable elements in my records even if it was just one scratch.

When I hold a gun, I know how to be sensible about it. I'm not holding it to wild out or just to shoot somebody because I'm mad at him. There's responsibility in buying that gun, and part of it is dealing with it like a man, and not dealing with it like an idiot, and getting behind iron bars for unnecessary reasons.

Travis Scott's dad was one of my OGs when I was a kid in Texas. Obviously Travis was nonexistent yet because his father wasn't even married back then.

DWYCK' was only intended to be a B-side of 'Take It Personal,' because we had done a record with Nice & Smooth for their album, Ain't a Damn Thing Changed, called 'Down The Line.' They were returning the favor with 'DWYCK,' being that we let them borrow the 'Manifest' instrumental.

Prince, Bootsy Collins, Earth Wind & Fire and Parliament all had albums that sound different. I wanted to show, as a hip-hop producer, I'm one of those that can do anything, because I was raised on so much music aside from rap and hip-hop.

I'm a big rock 'n' roll head, I love country music, I love yodeling music. But I'm still black and funky.

I like showing versatility.

I get up early all the time.

I'm not really a comparison dude. Even when people say 'Big or Pac?,' because they're two totally different types of lyricists.

I say if you don't write your lyrics, then you can't be the best rapper alive. Not at all. You can be one of the best artists, especially in rap, you gotta write everything yourself.

Jazz came from the streets, hip-hop came from the streets. It's just a different language. It's all borne out of hard times, struggle, and the fight to have equality and things be better.

I've been listening to Herbie Hancock forever. He's gone through so many transitions, even before bringing hip-hop to the forefront with ‘Rockit' and everything.

I always followed my heart and if my heart said I gotta pack up and go, I'm gone.

God knows I'm a good guy, I'm known in the industry as a good guy. I'm not known to be a foul, evil dude that you've got to watch out for and my name is not muddy in the industry.

I don't shop beats. That was never my method coming up. I think it's very strange to have a CD of 30 or 40 beats and then just pick one.

Everybody knows with rap artists, if you can't go to the hood, it's almost like you're not authentic, even if you're a dope artist that's respected.

I'm known for taking a long time getting music out, partially, my schedule is bananas, I'm only human, and then on top of that, I'm a one-man-producer.

Dre is someone I've looked up to since 1985 when he came to my college and performed with The Wrecking Crew.

Me and Tupac were long-time friends.

I don't usually collab with producers, because I don't need to. I never have, because I don't want to break my style of how I do things.

Black men, we're known for getting into some drama with other black men, specifically black-on-black crime. We're used to the confrontational attitude.

I think the fact that Gang Starr kept getting more and more successful was the reason we never thought about our age.

I used to lie about my age at first because you always want to be 18, but then you start looking at it and you're 40, and the money's still coming. And you're like, 'Man, who cares about that?'

I can't make the new generation like me, because they didn't grow up on me. So I stick to what I know.

I'm from the pre-Pro Tools era where you had to meet up with the artist and go over things if you wanted to record a track.

I'm cool with Dr. Dre, I have his phone number, and he picks up when I call.

I'm super cool with Kanye.

I like when people don't think I can pull things off.

And hip-hop is about style and finesse and being creative and different, and to do that you have to be ballsy enough to not do what everybody else does.

All my idols have been in the studio with me, because they wanted to be there.

The ghetto music of my era is hip-hop. And Parliament, and Curtis Mayfield, and Marvin Gaye, that was all the ghetto stuff when I was a baby, and then when I was a teenager it was hip-hop and we were taking all those old '70s sounds and recreating them and putting them into a hip-hop format.

I like soul, I like rock, I like new wave, I like punk music, I like blues, I like jazz, and I was brought up on all of them from a young boy all the way to my teenage years, when I was wild and crazy, in college.

That's the thing with social media: it's a gift and a curse. It's cool on one level, but it's also bad.