Russ

“Every time I put out music and it goes well, it's a confirmation of your taste and your gut.”

“I'm not obsessed with the idea of doing what you're supposed to be doing when you're a rapper. Walking around with cash that you haven't even provisioned for tax. Spending all of your time in the designer store to create some weird impression. I'm not interested, bro. I just like making music, and that's it.”

“When you're sitting in the basement trying to get on, you have no choice - you've gotta figure out how to make a song: 'I've gotta bang on these buttons until it sounds good.'”

“I think talking things out is therapeutic.”

“From the engineer to the producer, all of these roles are critical to creating a song.”

“My raps be crazy, and my hooks are nasty.”

“I love 2Pac, the cadences of 2Pac.”

“I love to sit down and have a conversation with like-minded people.”

“I would have only doubted myself if I was really attached to the result of what I was doing, but I was always doing it and will always do it for the love of making songs, and if you liked it you liked it, if you didn't, you didn't. It was always pure and always will be pure.”

“I don't deviate - once you get validated for being you, I don't know why you would deviate. I stick to my gut and my taste.”

“Drake and Kanye make me want to get better.”

“When I was coming up, I was, and am, producing, mixing, mastering, and writing everything. I would say that all the time. For one, self-sufficiency is a message that should be put out there: you don't have to outsource everything. Two, I'm proud of it.”

“I'm not sitting around, waiting for something to run across the Internet so I can go, 'Oh, that's what I'mma write about.' I just go around, live life, make music, and it's epic.”

“Being self-made means doing things your own way - and doing it without any handouts.”

“I didn't go to my prom. I didn't go to my homecoming.”

“I think people sometimes get my message misconstrued and believe I'm trying to brag, but I'm genuinely trying to show people that you can do it all yourself, and there's so much power and freedom in that.”

“I feel like I love a little bit of everything. I grew up listening to the stuff my parents liked, from Earth, Wind & Fire, Luther Vandross, Billy Joel to Bruce Springsteen and The Mommas & The Poppas.”

“When I was making beats, I don't remember thinking about doing it as a career, I just remember that every day I wanted to do it.”

“You can have a bunch of individually good players, but it doesn't matter. You gotta learn to play like a team.”

“My best friend - who I've known since I was 12 - and I started the DIEMON company together.”