When an underdog wins, they win for everybody, because somebody gotta come through that door and break it open and make it possible.
Saint Jhn
My journey is where I'm at right? It's the monopoly board of my life, and I'm making my rounds.
I don't know how to be comfortable. Comfort is uncomfortable to me so I push myself to new places.
So when I was a kid in Guyana, I would run barefoot in the street and bathe in the rain. That was a real thing. Picture that, showers falling from the sky in the middle of the Caribbean.
The first time I worked with Usher, I learned that I belonged in the room. You know the first time you get invited into a room you have never been in and you almost feel like you lied your way in? The second time, you don't feel like you lied your way in.
I'm not a center-of-attention guy.
I make these songs for me. That's the truth. I make them because that's what I want to hear. Long before you ever hear it, believe that I'm in a Porsche with the top off listening to it.
My mom made me read a ton of books, so I got good at words and understood the English language. So when I started rapping, words were something I knew. I learned how to manipulate them so that I could say whatever I wanted to say.
I'm a Brooklyn kid. So for me, rap and all the other forms of music that I participate in, we catch a win? It's a win for everybody.
I can't play guitar or piano. I can't even play dumb to get through TSA in the airport.
Every dollar I spend, I'm looking to fall in love. I have a few things I already love, but I'm always thinking that I can do better. I'm always on the hunt.
I don't want to give you the opportunity to find a box to put me in, figure it out later. When the records come out song by song, you'll hear it and get to determine how you want to classify me.
I didn't want to tell my story through my words in someone else's voice.
I say I design music. I can imagine it and sort of picture it. I think about all of the things I do in the world and say that I'm designing it because it takes the same skill set.
I like musk and oud in a really, really delicate way. Because sometimes, if there's too much oud, it just smells like you're in the back of a cab in Harlem and I can't do it.
There's no real music scene in Guyana, but there's a music space. So there's no scene because there's no economy for it, but there's a space because everything that spills over dancehall and reggae, spills over.
I use Cetaphil face wash. It's really simple. Nothing super fancy. I just feel like it needs to clean your face and not add or take away from anything.
I grew up in a church. My mom is a minister so she would make us go to every possible church she could muster.
People use the word success often, I don't use that word.
The 4-year-old me was getting laughed in school at for being too dark.
Self-care. I got that from my mom. Even if we had nothing, we were always moisturized. So much Vaseline. In the dead of winter, I was hot. I had a whole other layer on.
The only thing I know is the only things that I know. You can't ask me to talk about something I have no information on. I stay silent. It'd be foolish. So when I talk about something, it's something I at least have a little bit of familiarity with me.
I was rapping because there were so many things that I wanted to say. There weren't enough words for me to articulate all of the things that I wanted to say in a three minute song.
I think it takes an unbelievable amount of hours for anybody to master their craft.
I am building an archive. I don't need for anyone to tell me that I matter. I am just going to record it for myself.
My father wasn't present, so my older brother felt like a father. He was only two years older than me so that was all I had.
I just wanted people to hear the sounds and fall in love and not overthink it. You get a 12-year-old and you'll get a 55-year-old standing next to each other in the audience. They're from different eras of music but they'll feel the same way.
I'm a marketing guy at my core. If I wasn't doing music, I would still be introducing ideas on how I like branding and marketing.
I make music in terms of collections.
There's no better feeling than when I go outside and I see the faces of people who paid their money just to see me, that tells me the music is going where it's supposed to and that's encouraging.
I had a good start. I did a record with Beyonce. I did a record with Lenny Kravitz. I put out my second collection of music and then my second collection of clothes.
I was never afraid to try female products. I didn't believe in those gender identities as it related to products.
I think it's challenging trying to describe my sound. Not because I'm making some experimental martian music, but because it's a little broader. The things that you've heard are only fragments and small fractions of what you're going to hear.
I don't think of myself as just a rapper. But overspending on sneakers? That's a real rapper thing to do.
If I say I'm rich enough times and enough people say it back to me, I gotta be rich, right?
