Everyone's been on the "hip-hop is dead" campaign for years, and now it's the most unsure-of-itself genre ever.

Honestly, I don't feel pressure to live up to anything I've done because I tend to not listen to my work once a year passes.

People are very adamant about maintaining a certain sound or a certain era, like, "There were three years of rap that were great, so let's just keep doing that." The genre itself is just stuck in place. It's been treading water for a while.

I started freestyling with friends about eight or nine years ago. I started writing also around the same time, but didn't meet blockhead until about '94. I started making beats not until about '96.