My youngest sister was the first one to get pregnant. She was fifteen years old. That was shocking, really. My little sister getting pregnant. But that type of thing happens nowadays. I don't know, girls just want to be grown. That's basically it. They want to be grown. Live life fast. I see girls younger than my little sister with babies.

You have no choice but to mature as soon as that baby comes out. You know, that same minute. Because you can't be messing around, you got a baby to take care of. The world is hard as it is. You got to make it as easy as possible for that little girl or that little boy. You don't want them to grow up like you grew up. I don't want her to get, you know, influenced by a gang. I don't want her to be a little hussy, running around having sex with everybody. I sit up at night and I think about how is she going to grow up. But it's all on me and it's all on her mother. You gotta raise her right.

I am worried, because there's a lot of things to worry about nowadays, and I don't want to see my daughter end up getting hurt going to school or something. You have kids nowadays getting shot up in school. That's supposed to be one of the safest places for children. So I got to worry about stuff like that. And it is kind of stressful.

Everything you hear about South Central, here it is. It's not something l'm very proud to talk about, really. I'm still waiting to move out of here. I keep to myself. You know, I go to school. I go to work. I don't really affiliate with anybody over here anymore. That's the only way you can really survive out here. If you make friends, the only friends you gonna make are gangbangers, and you don't want that type of crowd. It's messed up down here. That's how you have to live. You have to keep to yourself. Only way you'll make it.

I've been pursuing rap since about age twelve or thirteen. It's all my mind is set on. Since '91, that's all l've really been thinking about. When I was in school, I would write raps in class. I wouldn't really be concentrating on my schoolwork. When I had the basement set up I would sit there pretty much all day, just writing rhymes, freestyling with the friends, you know.

I really have my heart set on this. I'm fascinated with fame. I just want to be famous. I want to be known everywhere. I want to have that respect, you know. Everywhere I go, "Hey, what's up, Smurf?" That's something l'm striving for. I wish it would hurry up and become a reality, though.

Rappers are everywhere. Trust me, every street in this neighborhood has a rapper. As a matter of fact, I'll bet you anything every street in this neighborhood has at least five rappers on it. If you want to have money, you have to go out there and make it. What better way to do it than to sit home and write music all day. And that's another thing that makes it so hard to come out as a rap artist, because everybody is trying to jump on that. You've got a lot of competition.

It does appeal to the youth and not just the youth, you know, anybody that wants to have money, that wants to have that power. They want to walk around with diamonds, you know, roll in Benzes, living every day as a weekend. I don't blame them. That's what everybody wants. Everybody wants to be rich. People see other artists blow up, and they want to live that lifestyle. They want to get out of the ghetto. A lot of people see it as an easy way out, you know, a quick way to fame. But in reality, it takes a lot to get there.

I'm frustrated, because basically people don't really want to hear what me and my friends talk about. The way the industry is now, there is only one type of music that sells, and that's gangster music. The world is a violent place. Gangsta rap preaches violence, and that's what people relate to. I'm not a gangster, so it's not something I would talk about. People like me, we can't really get too far rhyming how we rhyme. We would have to actually change and, you know, jump on that bandwagon.

Around the age of twelve or thirteen, I really didn't know what I wanted to talk about in rap. I was on that little murderous, gangster trip, too, 'cause it was selling. But the longer you stick with it, the more you mature. Basically, I didn't like what I was doing. I didn't feel what I was talking about was me. I would get up onstage, talking about, you know, "Kill this fool, kill this fool," "Slap this bitch," whatever. You know all the stuff you hear on the radio nowadays. I mean, I never hit a woman in my life, so why am I talking about this? When I rhyme, I want people understand what kind of person I am.

If you ask any other gangsta rapper, he'll tell you that it doesn't have an effect on society. But deep down inside, he knows. He knows it does, because the youth, they hear this music and they want to be hard. They want to be like Snoop or Tupac or whatever. They want to carry the straps, you know. Man, it's a trip how these little kids are acting nowadays. They want to walk around sagging, banging, talking about six-fours, Chevy Impalas, and all that. They don't need to be dwelling on that. They hear this music and they're fascinated by it. They're fascinated with that lifestyle. Out here, that's just how it is. Everybody want to be better than the other person. It's like a fashion show. Everybody wants to be flossy. Everybody wants to be hard. Everybody wants to have power.

Everybody watches The Box, you know, everybody. The Box is on all day, all night, all morning. It's basically a TV channel that shows videos all day, twenty-four hours, twenty-four, seven. It's like a jukebox. Just call in and order what you want to see. On MTV, they edit a lot when they show the videos. The Box is less edited, more raw. They give it to you how it is. I mean, the kids know the Iyrics. And that's not cool. Kids should have no knowledge of the stuff that people talk about in most music today. But you can't lock 'em up in a closet and keep them away from it, because it's everywhere, you know, everywhere you go.

Music is life. Everybody listens to music. It seems like everything is going downhill. The Iyrics, they're only going to get worse. Pretty soon, everything is going to blow up. I'm not blaming it all just on music, either, because it's not just the music. But it does play a role in society. If the music changes, then life will change. That's how I feel.

Wherever you go, everybody in the world is trying to gangbang now- Alabama, East Coast and West. There has to be someplace out there though where it's not like that. There has to be. The whole world can't be corrupted. I guess that's another thing I have to do- search for that one special place where I can sit down and not even think about that stuff. A safe place for my daughter.