My background is not typical hip-hop. I didn't grow up in the projects. I grew up in a single family home in a middle-class suburb. That doesn't mean I didn't experience hardship, but to me it's not about that, it's about the future and where we are trying to take it.

I've always felt that because I'm from Cleveland, which isn't recognised as a place for hip-hop, I needed to step it up if I wanted to make myself known.

I used to take Sharpies and draw on my pillowcases, and then go to sleep on them and wake up with red marker from the drool all on my face.

Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.

I just wanna learn and I wanna grow. I wanna consume as much information as possible. I wanna be great.

The world that I am coming from, hip-hop, is so regurgitated and repetitive that some people are used to that and they don't want change, they don't like change. And I get that, that's cool. Luckily for me, I'm confident in myself as an artist where I can do what I want, and as long as I'm cool with it, I'm cool with it.