I was reading about how you got into writing raps after your mom used to make you read The Autobiography of Malcolm X while on punishment. I feel like that speaks to your mom’s awareness and embrace of Blackness. What are your first memories of that and how do you feel like that affected you as a person?
My mama always told me, “You gotta remember. Not only are you a man, you’re a black man,” since I was able to comprehend what that shit meant. Especially after the Trayvon Martin shit when we was jits. That was my first instance of, like, “Yo, what the fuck? They out here just whacking us.”
So after that, my mom was like, “I’ma make sure you know what’s going on and the history of how we’ve been treated.” The Malcolm X shit actually wasn’t even intentional. She used to just take all my shit—really all I had was the Xbox, foreal—and be like, “Nigga, read!” And my mom used to just have cookbooks and shit. I’m not finna read a cookbook for eight hours in this muhfucka! So I just read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, bro, over and over and over. Probably read that shit, like, five times.
Would you read in general or was that just a punishment thing?
After that, I started reading in general. At first, I ain’t like reading because I’m like, “This shit you do in school, I’m not in school, I’m not finna read.”
I feel you.
But that book radicalized me so crazy. I’m like, “Yo, there’s so much information in books.” This shit literally invigorated me. That’s when the rabbit hole of information opened for me.
What were you reading after that?
After that, I got into a lot of occultism and metaphysics and shit. So, like, Aleister Crowley works. Awaken the World Within by Hilton Hotema. I was really reading a lot about death and shit too, because of my pops. It’s just like, I wanna know where my nigga went and what’s going on with that, you feel me?
Do the books you read inform your albums directly or is it an indirect thing?
I’d say it’s indirect. As of yet, I ain’t really, like, read a book [and think], “Aw, I’m finna make a album based on that.” Subconsciously, everything that I learn on that side of things affects the music for sure.
You said you were reading into occultism to get an answer on where your pops went. Do you feel like you got that?
Hell yeah.
What’s your conclusion?
Well, with the human experience comes the human flesh, physical body, [the] spirit, and then the soul. The human body goes back to which it came from, the dirt. Spirit is a personalized thing. It’s like your trauma, your experiences, your talents that make up that specific spirit. Like my father’s spirit, Dontay Hicks, is attributed to Dontay Hicks.
Your soul is broader than that. I believe in reincarnation to an extent. And my grandma told me some shit I’m not gonna speak on, but she kinda told me, like, “Your father’s good.” From all the reading I’ve done, I kinda got an idea what I needed as far as death around my pops and shit. They say when a loved one passes, a piece of their spirit literally goes into you. So not for nothing, bro: To this day, every time I hoop, I still got it, bro. I attribute that to my father. Every time I pick up a ball, that’s him in me.
