After watching the Grammys, it was great to see Lil’ Wayne come home with awards. To see hip-hop win these awards, it’s a great thing. Hip-hop is the #1 form of entertainment. Every other form of entertainment takes something from hip-hop, whether it’s movies, sports, wrestling. Hip-hop just stays growing bigger and bigger. But in America, we take it for granted. Overseas, they study hip-hop and love hip-hop, and they know it like we know sports. In sports, we know the play by play, the scores of all the games, and that’s how these kids overseas know us here in hip-hop. They really study hip-hop, and that makes me feel like we take it for granted. To us, it’s just music and entertainment.

When I see hip-hop up there collaborating with all the other genres of music, I think it’s a little bit of a give and take. Everybody’s benefitting. When T.I. and Justin Timberlake perform together, I don’t think T.I. has to comprise who he is to do a song with a Justin Timberlake. I think it’s a hell of a song. And I think T.I. is gettin’ a lot of exposure to Justin Timberlake’s fans as well as Justin being exposed to T.I. fans. JT is stepping out of that bubblegum pop role. He’s a hip-hop artist. He’s hip-hop and R&B, not the same N’Sync artist anymore. In hip-hop, as a rapper, I’ve been on tours and been on the road with rappers, but when I went on the road with Fall Out Boy, it was a completely different working atmosphere. The way they handled their merch, you don’t see that on a lot of hip-hop tours. Like, when I went on tour with Tech 9, I learned a lot. As a whole, we need to step it up and get that merch money. Sometimes you have a hit song, but you got to cultivate those fans in order to turn hip-hop into a career. A lot of hip-hop artists get conceited and get a big head. When I was with Fall Out Boy, I saw how they really just cultivated their fans. We got to step it up with our merchandising. When’s the last time you went to a hip-hop show and you bought bobbleheads and Frisbees? I think when you out of sight, you out of mind. You gotta stay relevant in fan’s life. Even if you don’t have a song out. Snoop don’t have a song out right now, but he got one of the most watched shows on TV.

I think with hip-hop there’s so much stereotypes that we put out on ourselves. We have an image that we have to live up to. We should just go out and be ourselves and just try to grind and make it to the top, ’cause everybody is taking from hip-hop. When was the last time we had a president that listened to hip-hop?? I think sometimes friendly competition is good, but we get so caught up with competing with each other, we fail to realize this really ain’t a competition. In the end, that’s gonna lead to your downfall. You don’t sell records by being better than the next person. Some artists do feed off their competition and it helps them to become better. But me, personally, I don’t thrive off competition, that will distract me more than anything.  My mind is on getting paid, putting out good music, and keeping my fans happy.