A halfway decent haircut will go a long way!
G-Eazy
Time is a finite resource that you can't get back. I have the same 24 hours you have, and you get the same 24 hours as me. As you rise, so does you chance for opportunity.
Word of mouth is the most valuable form of marketing, but you can't buy it. You can only deliver it. And you have to really deliver.
I'm just doing the only thing I know how to do. There was never a plan B.
I read the Steve Jobs book, and that kind of changed everything. I've been, like, an Apple geek my whole life and have always seen him as a hero. But reading the book, and learning about how he built the company, and maintaining that corporate culture and all that, I think that influenced me a lot.
I stick with a '60s vintage aesthetic of letterman's jackets, plain T-shirts, and good jeans.
You have to be dope; you have to find an audience and reach that audience with your identity and your message.
Sometimes you wake up the next morning after making a lot of bad decisions and have this nonchalant reaction like, 'These Things Happen' - what can I say?
It's definitely been a long, long... long, long, long, long, long journey since I was selling burnt CD's out of my backpack in downtown Oakland.
If you're not out living, then you've got nothing to talk about.
When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.
I've dreamed of being on the road, traveling and touring, for as long as I've been into doing music. It's what I live for. I just wanna be Willie Nelson.
Music is only special when it's coming from a genuine place - it's just energy trapped in a bottle.
I grew up in Oakland, California, and there was a really active scene in the Bay Area. Everyone else knew it as the 'Hyphy Movement' of Mac Dre, E-40, and The Pack.
I've always been an outsider to some extent.
I used to go and cop stacks of blanks CDs and sit there and burn copies of my mixtapes and print up my own mixtape covers and post up in downtown Oakland and Telegraph in Berkeley and literally was selling my mixtapes for five bucks, hand-to-hand.
I see myself as a hip-hop artist, but I never wanted to make music for a specifically white audience. That's not what I grew up around.
I hate picking out clothes.
Keeping in touch with the people that matter is important.
I know what it feels like to walk out in front of a sold-out crowd of a thousand people that are there for you, and how good that feels, but as an opener, you just have to train yourself to think that it's going to be harder.
You'd die very sad if you tried to make everyone in the world happy, you know what I mean? You can't; no one can.
What I actually do put much more weight on, in all honesty, is not being critically acclaimed - it's being respected by my OGs. When I talk to E-40 on the phone, every time I talk to him, I'm like, you know, if he tells me I'm doing good, I'm doing good.
Growing up, I heard as much E-40 and Mac Dre on the radio as I did 50 Cent. It's in our culture to support our own.
Touring is starting to feel more like home than home does.
I was fortunate to have teachers that were flexible with allowing me to miss more class than I was supposed to be able to, for the sake of being able to tour.
'Downtown Love.' I made that with one of my homies in New Orleans. The story is tragic, and the song is emotional. It's my favorite. I'm most proud of that; it's such a creative piece.
I think if you're constantly reinvesting into your content and giving the fans stuff, then you can continue to tour. You can continue to sell the merch and monetize the popularity of the brand.
When I was 12 or 13, the hyphy movement was beginning to bubble. And you had local acts such as the Federation or E-40, Mac Dre, and Too Short that the local radio station would play all the time. You'd hear E-40 as much as you'd hear Jay Z.
My friends put me on to Mobb Deep when I was a little kid. I've always been a big fan.
I try to find 15 minutes a day to just be alone without any distractions just for headspace to meditate and get my Zen on. I think that helps me get through the hecticness of the day on tour with the interviews, the sound check, the meet and greets, the show and the post-show meet and greets.
I would never consider myself a role model in the wide sense of the word.
I think the most important thing is to be yourself and be genuine and don't try to tell anybody else's story but your own. And if it comes from a genuine place, I think people can tell, and if it doesn't, I think people can tell, and I think that eventually it shows.
My mom was a single parent.
Me personally, I will always be a fan at the end of the day. No matter how big this gets, I still look up to other artists and people I respect creatively.
Anything back in New Orleans is definitely nostalgic. I really played my first shows of my life and learned to perform here. I learned how to work a stage and how to connect with a crowd. It all started here.
It was inspiring to see local legends like E-40 and Keak da Sneak break out with 'Tell Me When to Go.'
I just have more Yves Saint Laurent in my closet, but it is pretty much the same - I just wear black almost 365 days of the year. I am married to it.
I've got some growing up to do.
When you're literally staring at the person right in front of you, you're connecting with them on a personal level. I even jump into the crowd sometimes and perform with them, sing into the mic with them and share the experience with them.
That raw connection between the two performers is something you can't fully plan. You just go with it and get lost in that moment and feed off of each other.
I just kept telling myself that ultimately, the money that my grandparents had put away to go into my college fund, that they were investing for me to go to school and get this education, it had to be worth something.
My whole career has been from scratch, so I never took it for granted that people care and support what I do.
When I started making music, I was so heavy into the hyphy movement. That's something you only know so much about if you were right there living in it, submerged in the culture.
I had a job since I was old enough to work - since I was, like, 14.
Albums serve as paragraphs in an artist's autobiography.
That's the nature of this business. Something that took ten years to make can crumble in an instant. It could be snatched away from you at any moment.
I just hear a beat and start mumbling words. I just hear sounds and rhythms, and it just kind of comes intuitively. Formatting a song, figuring out a flow, how I respond to the beat.
There's only so much you can do on a physical level trying to tour or pass out mixtapes. Although that matters, I realized that you can reach more people putting your music on Soundcloud and networking with blogs to write about you. It really comes back to the music and what you release.
If we're deciding about merch pieces, t-shirts or hats, they have to be well designed and cool enough for somebody to want to buy it and then wear it and walk around advertising me and my music.
I think, back in the day, when I was first starting to make music, all I wanted to do was to get a record deal.
