00:00No one's more iconic than Snoop, like your grandma knows Snoop, right?
00:03I asked him, would he do it?
00:04He was like, yeah, you know, come over to the compound.
00:07We went over there.
00:07We did it.
00:08I knew once we were done, like, what it was going to be, and I felt confident about it,
00:13living in the world, you know, with its older brother.
00:23To do it again is something, it was a decision that I made because I can't recall a time
00:29in hip-hop where someone took one of the biggest songs of their career and redid it at all,
00:34right?
00:35But the thing about doing that is it's tricky because if a song is classic and everybody
00:39loves it that way, how can it coexist, right?
00:54Just being a part of G-Unit was real instrumental in, like, the confidence boost.
01:00You know, paying homage to what G-Unit was when it was what it was when I joined the group,
01:05and then just fucking trolling 50, just doing what I do best.
01:19Bullets are hot, and they erase your existence.
01:22I just remember, like, you know, writing raps with my right hand and still not being able
01:27to have total function with my left arm.
01:32I can remember laying in the bed at my grandmother's house watching MTV and BET and just trying to
01:39soak up knowledge from there, and then listening to Jay and Nas have this beef.
01:43It was just, like, hip-hop was just everywhere I turned in the early stages of my career and
01:47around the time I got shot, so I had this, you know, come to God moment about changing
01:52my lifestyle and doing something, you know, a little more positive.
01:57The first time I ever heard Kendrick rap, I knew two things.
02:11I knew that he would either rise to the occasion and be, you know, one of the greats, or that
02:18people would misunderstand his mission and his ability to be a super threat as far as the
02:27lyricist and the MC was concerned.
02:29What I wanted was for him to get everything that he deserved.
02:33He knew what he wanted, and, you know, he seized every opportunity.
02:42Just growing up in Compton, I think the first time that I lost a friend to gang violence,
02:47I think I might have been in first or second grade, walking home, and shots rang out, and
02:52one of my, you know, best friends at the time, he got murdered, like, on the street with me.
02:58Bullet flew, and he caught a random stray, and he died.
03:00I can remember going to my grandmother's house, being confused.
03:03And I was like, well, am I going to see him tomorrow at school?
03:06And she was just like, um, no.
03:09I couldn't grasp the concept.
03:10I didn't know about death.
03:11I didn't know about life.
03:12I just know you're a kid.
03:14You're not focused on those things, you know?
03:15You're five or six years old, and you just can't comprehend how someone is just erased
03:20from their existence, and you'll never see them again.
03:2320 years since I say the West Side, and I'm going to be the underdog until I die.
03:27So the underdog, I always knew that, like, I would be the guy that would be a little bit,
03:33like, slept on and whatever.
03:35Because, see, the difference is most artists or most rappers have been dreaming and working
03:41to be an artist their entire life.
03:43Me, this shit is a side quest.
03:44I started off being, like, a basketball player.
03:48I played video games, and I was a gang member.
03:50I could turn rap on and off.
03:52When I'm at, like, home or I'm in my daily life, I don't fucking think about rap at all.
03:56The record was so huge, and it still is to these days.
03:59People come up to me all the time, and they're just like, hey, the love had changed my life.
04:02And it could be a white guy that could have been, like, his song in college, or it could
04:06be somebody that was in the penitentiary, and the song just made them feel like they wanted
04:10to get back out and change their lives.
04:12And, I mean, again, it changed my life.
04:16Hated to love it.
04:17I didn't expect it to do, you know, to be as big as it was.
04:2150 knew that it was out of here as soon as, you know, he did the hook.
04:26Even Dre.
04:26I felt like in the beginning, Dre, he felt like it was a dope record too, but I don't think
04:30he thought it was a single.
04:31Dre ended up playing it for Jay-Z on a yacht or something, and I was like, yeah, this
04:36is crazy.
