Prodigy

Growing up in bad neighborhoods, you see and experience a lot.

Anything that Havoc or I do is always going to point back to Mobb Deep.

Our first name was the Poetical Prophets before we changed it to Mobb Deep, and when I look back on it now, that was, like, a ill name for us because that is what we really were.

A sickle-cell attack would creep up slowly in my ankles, legs, arms, back, stomach, and chest. Sometimes my lips and tongue turned numb, and I knew I was going into a crisis.

The aggressiveness of it attracted me to hip-hop because I was angry inside. I was an angry kid because of the sickle cell. So I liked the anger in hip-hop. That's what attracted me to it; that's what made me want to do it. It helped me get my aggression out.

Basically, I've always raised my kids that people learn from their mistakes, and every father wants their kids to be better than them.

You got to treat Mobb Deep different because our fan base is different. Our fan base is in the 'hood across the world.

It took me a while to like Wu-Tang's style.

Our style of hip-hop, our style of beats, our style of rhymes - you gonna give us burn. We gonna get our burn that we deserve.

My kids know they can't make the same mistakes I've made. They've been through a lot with me always being on the road.

I'm always vocal about people being unique and different in hip-hop.

Going to jail is beyond what anyone thinks it is.