I have a few different managers, and one of them hit me up today and was like 'I'm going to set you up with these guys doing beats and such. . . ' I was like cool, as long as I can do what I do. Just because kids are going like this now, I'm not going to do that because I am not 18 years old. I'm not going to rap like I'm in grade three because it's popular. I'm just not going to do that. It's not because I'm being stubborn, and I definitely not that guy that is getting older and does not understand the younger generation.
My music is very edgy and the energy is very raw, but I am also getting out this positive message without being a teacher. I don't want to hear anybody preach or teach things to me, especially when I was a kid. But there are messages that people are grabbing onto without me even realizing that they are messages.
To me it's very important to be a leader not a follower. Sometimes it takes balls and heart to do that. Sometimes it's not that east to say.
I walked away from everybody I knew. I locked myself in a loft that I rented, like I told you, where I was rolling quarters for cigarettes. I was having to borrow money off of the rent guy. . . the real estate agent that was renting me the loft.
I'm extremely proud of what I have achieved. I've travelled around the world twice, went from rolling quarters for cigarettes, balling my eyes out, wondering what I was going to do after losing three million dollars, to being very financially comfortable, to buying a Mercedes G Wagon to being able to get whatever I want and living in a beautiful apartment in West Hollywood, furnished exactly how I want it. Life is incredible.
They look at me and say how come you're winning? You came back from the dead three years ago, and you're already killing it. I mean I came back from the dead. Thanks to my family and thanks to Kevin Zinger and my brother Evidence and Rocko, especially my blood family and the guys in Swollen Members. I wouldn't even be here today if it wasn't for those people.
I know a lot of people connect with my story. Every night that I do shows, I get emails and texts and tweets about how my life story has helped change other people's lives. With my sobriety and what I went through. I don't do a whole bunch of songs, that from start to end talk about one particular thing. That's a missing puzzle.
Part of the reason I am not there sooner, is that I was not allowed to go to the United States. Now I am allowed. I am so thankful I have been given a second chance and I live there and already more has happened in six months for my career then in the last ten years.
I don't go and ask my friends for favours. They are real, true, incredible amazing human beings with good hearts. They have evolved as human beings. I have evolved as a human being and I have let this wall down that I had.
If you ever get to a wall, you just got to break that wall down and keep going, and I feel like I have come up with some conceptual songs that will really connect with people and that is something that I have been showing and improving my lyrical ability so much that I came to this realization that I also want to make music that people can connect with.
I'm not trying to make any radio hits, or throw any curve ball or any bullshit. I've learned my lesson in life to just do what I love and if people accept it that's great. It's going to be, if you are a Madchild fan, it is going to be me at my purest rawest form. But I have come up with some things that I think are me thinking outside of the box and going to the next level.
You have to understand for my whole life I have been romanticized by this other side of the fence. This whole darker, egotistically, sort of mean world. I fully embraced that world and three or four years ago I completely walked away from that world, literally.
If I am a fan of my own music, which I am, I want to hear the best Madchild I can hear. What am I missing? I sort of had a good talk with some close friends of mine that I really respect and look up to in music as well and we all just came to the conclusion, just some more storytelling songs of things I have gone through.