00:00The source is in me.
00:01It's not in a bottle.
00:03It's not in a label.
00:04It's not in a man in a suit.
00:05It's not in a dollar bill.
00:06It's not in a radio.
00:07It comes from me, and I don't need anything outside of myself and the glory of God to
00:12lead me anywhere in my career.
00:14And once I did that, I was like, I'm going to write a mixtape.
00:17It's going to be fantastic.
00:18I'm going to tell my story the way I want to tell it.
00:20I don't care about hits, shut up!
00:25And I made the mixtape.
00:30Denial is a River represents two things for me.
00:36One is just the pure storytelling element of hip hop.
00:40It takes me back to like a Slick Rick children's story type of energy, which I really, really
00:45value and love.
00:46The other half of it is just me in a humorous way, talking about a lot of dark things.
00:51It's like a diary entry.
00:52I was in the studio, and I actually had a real journal entry, and I was like, I'm just
00:59going to say my truths very, very honestly and rawly, and I'm not going to try to be
01:05metaphorical about it.
01:06I'm just going to tell a story in chronological order and unpack what's happened to me over
01:11the past couple of years.
01:12It took me a couple of days to write it, but once I got it, it was out of there.
01:30Okay, first of all, let's clear the air.
01:40I wasn't going through his Instagram.
01:42He gave me his login because he needed me to do something.
01:45And then I got a DM through his Instagram, because I just want to clear that up.
01:49And I saw the DM, and I was like, oh my God, I just assume, okay, he's cheating on me with
01:54this girl.
01:55I'm just going to see what she's about.
01:56I open up the profile.
01:57It is not a girl.
01:58It's a guy.
01:59And mind you, this is a guy who is very much like, I'm straight, and I don't lie, and I
02:05don't lie.
02:06Alpha male.
02:07Girl.
02:08Turns out he one of the girls, which is okay.
02:13You could have told me that.
02:19You thought you had a one-up on me, and I didn't let him know immediately that I found
02:22out.
02:23Never do that.
02:24Keep calm.
02:25Stay controlled.
02:26And I got my lick back.
02:27I don't know the detail about how I did that, but I definitely got my lick back.
02:35The year 2021, I'm over the sky.
02:38I move on.
02:39I'm newly signed.
02:40Coming out of survival mode, trying to learn how to live, I'm coming into new money.
02:45I'm coming into a new label.
02:46I moved all the way to California.
02:48I'm by myself.
02:49I'm kind of newly navigating Hollywood, my music, and new friends and people around me.
02:54I was kind of lonely, but tunnel vision focused on fire, recording six songs a night, just
03:02workaholic energy, which isn't always bad.
03:06But it did get a little dark.
03:14When I was first coming up, the first song that I had to blow up on TikTok was Yucky
03:19Blucky Fruitcake, and then I had another one blow up, which was Persuasive.
03:22We also had Stress, which went viral as well, and What It Is.
03:26And around that time, it's interesting because those songs were doing really well on the
03:31internet, but I feel like over time, it started to influence how I was making music.
03:36When you're in the industry and you have a label, when something works, they want you
03:39to keep doing what works, which isn't a bad thing.
03:43But I realized that I was outgrowing that, and that formula didn't work for me.
03:47So I moved on.
03:52I'm always on set.
03:54Everything was moving so fast and happening.
03:56I'm doing award shows and doing interviews, and I'm doing press, and I'm doing shows,
04:01and I'm just like...
04:02All of the drastic changes that happened in my life, I haven't tooken a beat to process
04:07what has happened, which means to evaluate, how am I doing in my body?
04:12What is going on in my mind right now?
04:13What are my morals?
04:14Who am I now that I'm in a new world and in a new space?
04:18I didn't have time to process that, because I had to focus on other things.
04:28In music, there is a formula that works.
04:31There's a formula that works for radio.
04:34There's a formula that works for pop.
04:36There's a formula that works for hip hop as well.
04:38It felt like at that time, that particular formula was diluting my story, my ability
04:46to be vulnerable.
04:48It was diluting my creativity.
04:51Music is about creativity and therapy for me.
04:55At some point, I lost sight of that.
04:57When I lost sight of that, it caused me to be just sad and depressed.
05:04The TikTok formula, the TikTok music formula, fuck that.
05:08It's cool, but not right now.
05:10I need a cleanse, need a detox, but we ain't got time to stop.
05:14The charts need us.
05:15Now I'm speaking from the perspective of what other people are telling me.
05:18It's like a codependency on like, okay, well, these people know what they're talking about.
05:23And they like, okay, Shorty, you can't stop.
05:25Nothing stops.
05:26The train doesn't stop.
05:27You got to still keep doing what you got to do.
05:29We got to hit these charts, so we need to make these hits.
05:31And they got to sound like this, and they got to move like that.
05:34When I say stop, I'm not meaning literally stop working.
05:37I think I'm talking about stop creating from the perspective of what other people want
05:42you to make.
05:43Stop depending on labels and fans and people telling you the type of music that you should
05:50be making because this is what sells, and what sells makes a great superstar.
05:54That's not fucking true.
05:56You selling doesn't make you a great artist.
05:58And what's priority to me is being a great artist.
06:00So I had to stop that.
06:08Honestly, I can't even fucking cap no more.
06:10I'm going through a lot.
06:11It's a dark time for me.
06:132023 was the darkest.
06:15This is around the time where I'm working on my album, and I tried so many different
06:18things that just weren't resonating with me.
06:20I'm also at my lowest with substance abuse and alcohol abuse, and I realized that I needed
06:27to get sober.
06:28I needed to clear my mind.
06:29I needed to distance myself from everybody and everything.
06:33I needed to be still by myself with just me and God and solitude.
06:55I'm a rock star, and I like to have fun, and I do like strippers, and I do like to fuck,
06:59and I do like to dibble and dabble and doodle.
07:02It was like me also unpacking that even though I like these things, I'm still operating not
07:07at my best.
07:08I'm at an all-time low, which is what I said.
07:10And so of course you like these things, and you're gravitating towards these things.
07:14But it's a balance because I needed to admit to myself that I'm doing this.
07:19This is what is happening.
07:20This is the reality.
07:21But also, I'm not my best self right now.
07:24And just when it couldn't get worse, my ex crashed my place and destroyed all I owned.
07:30That felt like a peak in my low.
07:34Not only am I going through so much within myself and in my life, creatively I feel numb,
07:40which broke me because the only thing that I love to do is music, is how I communicate
07:45with God and how I communicate with the world.
07:48And on some real shit, I just felt like I couldn't even make music without drinking,
07:53which was really sad for me, and I knew it was serious.
07:55But in the midst of all that, a partner that I love so much destroyed everything that I
08:00worked hard for.
08:01At that point, I felt like, okay, I have nothing.
08:04I am broken.
08:05My home is broken.
08:06I don't feel safe in my space.
08:08I don't have a space within myself.
08:10This is it.
08:11Whoopsie, made a oopsie, $100,000 oops, made me loopy.
08:15Honestly, I'm escaping being serious about this, and I'm in denial.
08:20I'm gonna make light of this in some way.
08:21This has to be funny.
08:22The oopsie line kind of reminds me of, have you ever seen those memes where they're girls
08:27driving?
08:28They run over a person, and it's like, oopsie, excuse me?
08:33That's kind of the energy.
08:34I'm just making light of, okay, my life is shit right now, whoops.
08:39And I like doing that because it doesn't have to be so serious.
08:43We gotta laugh at things sometimes.
08:44I ain't a killer, but don't push me.
08:46Don't wanna have to turn a nigga guts into soup beans.
08:49The last couple of lines where I get really serious, and my voice starts to growl like
08:53this, it's the first time in the whole song where I'm actually expressing anger as anger.
08:59I built up this whole story, and I waited intentionally to the last lines to really
09:04give it to you and let you know, no, I'm actually really pissed off, and you about to have me
09:08revert to somebody that I was supposed to leave behind.
09:11That's why I did it that way, and I also just have a lot of Eminem influence, that
09:16Slick Rick, even Nicki Minaj, the way she animates her voice to just evoke an emotion.
09:22So that was what that was.
09:25My cover art for Alligator Bites Never Kill, I'm holding an alligator.
09:29That was a powerful moment for me.
09:30It was a little scary because it is a real alligator.
09:34A lot of my fans ask me that.
09:35I'm holding an albino alligator, which is one of the rarest animals.
09:39They can pretty much adapt in any environment, cold, hot, wet, dry, doesn't matter, and that
09:45represents me.
09:47I'm a survivor by heart, and I think I just started realizing and learning how to live
09:52instead of how to survive.
09:53In the cover art, I am wounded, and I have been bitten, but I am also the gator, and
09:57it's kind of like these wounds you can cause.
10:00You can hurt yourself, but you can also heal yourself, and you will heal.
10:04Is there another aspect of the song that we didn't get to that you feel like we should?
10:07Oh my God, my double entendre.
10:09No, I'm not in a gang, but I'm always on set.
10:12Catch it.
10:14That's all.
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