I feel like some artists need a record label, and some don't.

I can do a whole project with Madlib and turn around and do a record with Gucci Mane. Gucci Mane, E-40, and Black Thought on the same record. I like all those rappers, so why can't I work with them in some type of capacity? It just speaks to my versatility. I don't just listen to one type of rap. I listen to all of it so I can make all of it.

I always feel like the underdog.

I think that 'Pinata' album is going to stand the test of time. It's going to be a moment in hip-hop, whether people know it or not. It's nothing else like that in rap. It's going to forever hold its place.

I always want everything I do to be somewhat cinematic. I don't want to be the rapper that'll just post up and shoot a video anywhere with no real meaning to it.

Everything don't work out for the best. You have to use a lot of those things as lessons in order to build yourself up.

I'd be quiet as a mouse if I didn't have the correct feeling about my music. I feel like I'm able to talk about it and say I'm one of the best because I think I got the music to back that up. I got the live show to back that up. That's all that matters.

If you say your product is the best, back that up.

I'm so hands-on and involved in my own music that I feel like if I put the same effort into another artist, then I can definitely cultivate something great.

The things I rap about are 100 percent real. But at the same time, I don't rap about those things to tear my city down. I give you the reality of what it is and what I been through and how it is living in those conditions in Gary, Ind.

Gary is a old factory town right outside Chicago. From my standpoint, my family migrated there in the '50s and '60s from Mississippi - Sardis, Mississippi - shout out to Sardis, Mississippi. My family migrated there just like a lot of black families in that area: they migrated there to get jobs, to get those factory jobs, that steel mill job.

I never write a song before I get the track because I just feel that I have to make a marriage with that track with my raps. And if it's something that's already there, it ain't gone really fit, I don't think.

I started hustling in early adolescence.

I'm just glad we get to see old records being broken. That's what sports is all about.

I'm like LeBron, man. I'm like a smaller LeBron. That's why I'm not in the NBA. If I had about five, six more inches, I'd be in the league.

I just want to put my stamp on all kinds of music. Everything I do is going to be gangsta rap, street-based, street-oriented.

Stuart Scott was a hero.

I've been engulfed in sports since I was a 2-year-old; I picked up any kind of ball - a basketball, baseball, football - I just loved to play something. I loved the energy of being in arenas and watching the game on TV.

After I got dropped by Interscope, I knew in my heart that I had to fight back some way or not rap at all. I just took it upon myself to get myself where I needed to be.

Jeezy just recognized my grind, and I jumped on board with him to enhance it. Artistically, we're in the same mind frame. We come from very similar backgrounds - poverty. That's something that we can both relate to, something that we can convey in our music.

I'm not trying to obey the rules of radio.

I'm trying to bring gangster rap back to the forefront, like in the early '90s.

It's in the American spirit to take advantage of an opportunity.

This is the land of getting over. The land of second or even third chances; the land of doing whatever you have to do by any means necessary in order to fulfill the American Dream.