This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It's all hip-hop. You can't say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

I was a James Brown junkie as a kid.

In the '60s, you know, you had this -- you'd have, you know, James Brown on the same show with Alan King, and that was -- that made perfect sense, and it still makes perfect sense,

When the pastor's up there, they do this thing called looping. They are literally riffing and spitting in the key of the organ. When looping, you're in key, you're in a rhythm, you're in a pocket, and that's where James Brown was pulling from, and so that's where I'm pulling from. The only difference is I'm coming at it under hip-hop.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

The hardest thing about being James Brown is I have to live. I don't have no down time.