[Music] nice congratulations on your return your 13th album legit and um you know this is a real body of work king's disease it's strong title and uh the album uh justifies that title as a start-to-finish body of work it's a great feeling it's a great feeling as of but it's also it's of course that the the world you know so putting out music now is like i could have held up and hold on to it but i had to let it go and the world's messed up
you know but you know i had to do it i had to release put it out because this is a point in time where it's going down in history and 2020 is something we ain't asked for so i needed to do something to just i couldn't hold on to it i was working on it i stopped because of covid because of the pandemic and all the racial injustice and all this stuff i couldn't couldn't finish the record and then after my man hit boy hit me
i said he's like come on you gotta you gotta go we gotta finish this we're having a great time making it so yeah you know i think if you'd released an album that had been finished pre-2020 i can understand even more why there would have been a concern about how does this relate so much has changed and the world is going through serious growing pains hopefully for a greater harvest and a better future
but you address a lot of this on this album and so in many respects we need an album like this because art imitates life and life influences art right right what was the one song just to get the ball rolling that you felt most passionate about from the second sessions that you did um where you really felt drawn into the subject matter that relates to now is the one song on the album that really speaks to you it would be ultra black but um
a lot of things that i was i was working on it was already there or the title was king's disease before this craziness happened and a lot of the things i was saying but you know watching um george floyd and what happened i couldn't watch the film but just watching all the terror happening all over the country i just felt the knee on my neck and i felt a knee on our people and i felt like i needed a pride moment i needed a
moment to be happy about our existence to have made it so far and all the things that we have done as a people and it's constantly being ripped apart i in the moment that we were going through so much darkness i wanted a song that would bring like something different than anything i've done before um i didn't want people to get it and then here's something i did before so ultra black was that representation of a uplifting feeling
and a feeling of empowerment can you describe what your vision for king's disease is and what this title represents to you two powerful words that i've never seen together wow wow when i started the record before the pandemic hit the first record i wrote was king's disease and i just saw a lot of people as kings in this music industry athletes entertainers entrepreneurs doctors people like yourself i see us all as kings and i say
we got to a certain level you know and the guys are still on the block kings i'm like we survived we got to a certain level those guys survived got to a certain level they're kings but what is the thing to watch out for now you got if you have everything you want or you're in this good position or a decent position to grow you have to watch out for the things that's gonna get in your way and it's usually our own selves that get in our way
and it's too much it's the drinking it's the wine it's the sushi bottle red wow this is from francis or from what year this is what and it's the lifestyle i'm i'm watching people live and it's a lot of that and you know as you know about gout and stuff like that which i never had um but i know people what i got got i know people that got it just from the the lifestyle that's a lot of wagyu beef and red wine right
exactly somewhere someone needs to step in there needs to be a level of lifestyle intervention if you're getting gout from the wagyu aged beef and the pinot noir exactly and in in another form wagu would be ego it would be drunk off your own power sure it's figurative yeah it's fiction sure so so you look at it and you go all right king what do you do now with this position all the way up to the president's office you get drunk with power
is it women is it what are you allowing to take your time and what is happening that can take you off of your throne be aware of it right and as you grow it's all about learning how to take care of yourself because things are going to come at you fast things came at me fast from all different directions you've achieved a recognizable amount of fame now throughout your life you would definitely be regarded in countries all
over the world as someone who is quote unquote famous a recognizable figure based on the quality of your work but of course significant success over a period of time equals fame and you've spoken about that in the past
and various points on your albums and you touch on it a little bit here in particular in relation to relationships you know on a couple of really important songs like replace me with don toliver and big sean i mean that's about as open
as i've heard you in that regard was is that the big sacrifice looking back on all of this the idea of trust i'm better than i was but i had relationships that were good they were cool but i also had ones that made me not trust anybody anymore it made me afraid to be in a relationship anymore because the things that can happen it's like you know you don't know who's real and all of that and that comes out in the music you know
what i was dealing with for a couple of years with dating you know what i'm saying so i'm like i gotta fix me i'm not a problem are they the problem what do i need to fix about me to make myself better at relationships and don't run so much if i was dating felt like i was not opening up enough or i'm not sharing my feelings or my thoughts and i was just protecting myself and guarded so many times that you know relationships would go
away because they just wouldn't trust me they were like this guy's not telling me nothing and whatever the case may be so i just started putting that in the music with this album you know and it was cool to get big sean on there because yeah his versus heartbreaking and not just because of the of the the words but what i really appreciate about sean is that he connects his performance to the emotion of his narrative he doesn't just expect
you to connect emotionally to the words he will present it to you almost like an actor does wow he's great and his relationship as well as a very popular one you know so for him to open up about that you know it was like he met me right there where we're opening up we're talking about our lives it's funny when you think back on all of the opportunities and all the um achievements that you've had there were a couple of
of unrealized ones things that were rumored talked about never quite landed and i think real fans felt the firm was that they felt that opportunity for you and a.z cormega foxy brown and of course dr dre as well it was like the greatest basketball team on paper that just couldn't get to the playoffs you know what i mean yeah for sure now we have a chance to live out some of that as fans some out of that some of that dream coming true but
before we get to the song which brings you all back together are you comfortable now putting into words some of the reasoning why it never eventuated in the first place sure the whole idea from the beginning steve stout was managing me back then he was good with jimmy iveen and i i got good with jimmy and i was good with dre and me and dre wanted to work we went to work bad um i be me being a big fan of his music since before i was ever in music
to uh get doing a record on my second album and then we just we wanted to do the firm and we did it with aftermath so i just saw dre not long ago he said now there was managers there was managers assistants there were so many people in the studio that i couldn't lock in and if we had dre's full of attention to do the entire project things may have been different at the time steve stout managed my me and the producer team the track
masters so automatically it was a family thing we wanted dre and track masters to split the production that was different for dre so he dealt with it he he was cool because he wanted to see what was going to happen he wanted it to happen too many people too many people involved and it killed the creative you know how important was it that aside from making a record on this album with the firm that you were able to show that that
friendships have been mended because some of you know there was some fallout over that yeah me and cormega we grew up together we did a lot you know of learning together he's a little older than me but we were still like brothers you know and the streets divide divided us into different directions because he's older guy than i was and he wound up getting locked up you know if he was home he would have
definitely been on my first album but he got locked up so when he came home things are bubbling he comes home with this attitude like let's get gangsta on on everybody and i'm like more like yo no way chill and he told me uh about not long ago when we were talking he said that i told him i'm not the same guy from the block he said he didn't get that to later so he said that i was doing a lot of things telling him about how it was going
but he didn't really get that till later he was ready to get back to the goodfellas behavior that he was on and if there was a natural there was just a split because he's got a mouth on him and i wasn't trying to hear that and he wasn't trying to hear me and it was a sad thing because we were super tight and it didn't then it got bad and then it got worse nobody got harmed nobody anything like that but it was like that bad
where it could have went any either direction so we we got cool a couple of years ago but we didn't talk since then so to talk with him it was like a really it really touched my soul that this guy who i've known before this rap stuff it was
just great to to get everything back full circle the definition is one of those songs when you listen to it there's jaw-dropping moments in there and the performance carries you all the way through what was the premise
behind the definition the definition of what of king's disease in my case it's black males and females these people that was once in bondage these people us who was once in bondage and going through the worst treatment ever to come out of it to only be going through it again in different ways so that split to me hurts me it's a part of the thing that keeps you from being the king that you're supposed
to be from being the queen you're supposed to be is that where at odds the president and him dealing with his disease and me dealing with my disease which are haters and us under under watch of the big brother all the time and we we're losing our privacy more and more we're losing all these who's really in charge all of these things i wanted to pile up in the song and let it flow naturally and let it land on the track whichever way
it needs to and my art i'm saying is the way i kill this disease now that you have a road map open to you and this album is so free and like i said it's so honest and up front and nostalgia plays such a valuable role to it looking back now with the benefit of hindsight when was the toughest i think the toughest is when my mom passed that was very tough that was 2002 other than that it was little moments here and there i can't a
kid it's hard to really think back and pinpoint exactly but it brings us to the cure at the end of the album and that out and that song sort of comes in two parts which is amazing because the first half is this crazy psychedelic really strange like one of the strangest things you've ever been on but you just you know you absolutely crush it and then it just swerves into this beautiful completion moment thank you the cure of king's disease yes
yes it's really just not letting the things you can't change be your demise and looking at yourself and recognizing the good in you and your roots where i've been where i'm going understanding that the music of it makes you to me is a calming the drums not but the music is the melodies is a common kind of vibe and it just i think it's more of a put yourself at peace at once vibe all right last question this album you put it out you've given
us this gift at a time where no artist really wants to be cornered to put music out like this in this time frame it's not ideal and everyone acknowledges that so we more than appreciate the gift of music at this point because it comes at a cost to artists it does but as we move forward and as the world continues to try to put itself back together and and like i said for a brighter future for something that fits better um are
you feeling creatively inspired because it often happens you finish something you love as much as i know you love king's disease and you're just still charging is that how it feels i'm so charging right now that i'm not going to stop recording i'm working on something else now that's what i want to i want to say you i don't know how are you dying to tell me though you're dying to tell me i'm working on something
else and i love this album and i hope everybody else does and but it's definitely charged me in so many different ways that um i got to take advantage of this time for sure musically yeah thank you for your time man i was really i'm really glad i got a chance to speak to you on this album and uh and it's always a joy and thanks again for another remarkable record our number 13 27 summers and no slipping incredible thank you king appreciate you