- [Off camera] This going to be on TV, y'all. - [Off camera] You're going to be on TV again? - It's going to be MTV. - [Off camera] At what time? - I have no idea yet. - [Off camera] You gonna be on TV? - [Off camera] You stayin' up here? - Huh? - [Off camera] You stayin' in Detroit? - I don't stay — well, I don't stay here no more. I used to stay right down the block. - On what street? - Dresden. - Oh, I've heard!
[crowd murmuring] - Right over there. - Why you move? - Huh? - Why you move? - 'Cause I rap now. - [Off camera] Yo, man, this
is gonna be f—ing great. You know that, don't you? - Yeah, this s—t will be hot. - [Off camera] It's so great for you to be back here. - And now that you've seen Cancún and L.A., I mean, wouldn't you
rather be someplace warmer, or do you, like, relate
to the frigidity up here? - I'm just used to this. I'm used to it. It's like — not that it's, like, fun. You know, you just get used to something. - Yeah. - And you just get settled
in, and you just wanna stay. - So, you're a Detroiter for life, pretty much? - Yeah, I'm a Detroiter for life. [Radio playing] - And where are we headed for? - Um, we're gonna go to my old house, and I'm gonna knock on the door and I'll see if I can get in because I left something in my room. - [Laughs] OK, what part of town is this? Is this in — - This will be the east side of Detroit. - Alright. Do you have a lot of warm
memories about growing up there? - Yeah, a lot of fun stuff. - Now, if one of your fans
was coming to Detroit, where's a place they could go at night to maybe bump into you? Do you go out a lot? - I would say, like, Saint Andrew's Hall, on Friday night. - Mhm. - Saint Andrew's Hall, or — Yo, Paul, what's the
other places that we used — I used to go to the Café Mahogany. - You're probably pretty well accepted in these places by now, right, I imagine? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. It was when I first started out, when I first showed up, you know, when I first started grabbing mics in little clubs and stuff like that. - What makes people from Detroit different than people from other
cities, would you say? Is there a certain kind of
person that lives in Detroit? - What makes people
from Detroit different? - Yeah. - Just because, like,
in our city, we don't — there's not a whole lot
to do, so people are like — there's not a lot here, you know? We're just starting to get things here, so it's, like, you know, there's a lot of tension in this city. - Yeah. I used to sell my tapes, my local tapes, up in that store right there, Golden Jet Records, right there. [Laughs] Excuse us. I used to go up here and
pass out flyers for my — when I used to paint on clothes, pass out flyers everywhere. And plus, when I used to
do talent shows and stuff, at other schools, I would come up here and pass out flyers for those, too. This used to be a store called A.O. Price. I used to go up here every day. My mother used to give me $2 for cigarettes. I used to go up to the
store, steal the cigarettes, and keep the money for lunch the next day. - [Laughs] Those days are over. - Those days were great days. - I mean, really? Did you enjoy them, were you having fun? - Yeah, now that I look back on it, I mean — - Yeah. - I kinda miss it. This is the house. See back there, there used to be a garage. - Yeah. We had our garage burn down. - Alright. Well, let's see what's happening here. They fixed the place up. - Yeah! - They've been shoveling the snow. - Actually doesn't look that bad. - No. [knocking on door] - Let's see if anybody's here. - If they're not, we'll try the back. - [Chuckles] We'll break in. - [Laughs] - If not, we'll just take a look ourselves. Now, if it were me, I would have let you in, because you — - Excuse me. - [Distant yelling] - Huh?
- [Distant yelling] - You have what? - [Behind door] I have not cleaned the house. - Oh, that's alright. - What if we take
a look in the backyard? Can we do that? - [Behind door] Yeah, go ahead. - Alright, thank you. - Oh! - Do you remember the backyard? - Yeah. - Did you have, like, swings and stuff in the backyard? Or — - Yeah, we used to
have this one little swing. - Uh-huh. - It was right there. Then, this is where the garage used to be, - This used to be, like, a little thing for the birds, but it was always empty. - Yeah. Was your family pretty happy
when they were living here? Relatively speaking. - It was alright, it was alright. It was just me, my mom, and my little brother. - Yeah. So you write all your stuff
down beforehand, right? I mean, the writing is
really important, obviously. You're not just freestyling all of this. - No, no, no. Much thought goes into
everything that I do. - Mhm. - Much thought, you know. I try to make — I'm conscious of, like, every line that I write A lot of rappers don't wanna, or just a lot of groups, in general, don't wanna burn bridges. - Yeah. Like, I don't wanna say this about this person because — "What if I meet them?" Or whatever, whatever. You know, I don't think like that. I think, like, if there's a
reason for me to burn a bridge, then I obviously don't wanna speak to you ever in my life, you know? - [Laughs] So it's like, if I feel a certain way, then I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna express it. - Yeah. - And I think a lot of people hold back, and I just don't hold back. There's a school right down here. - Mhm. It's called Osborn. I didn't go to Osborn. It's like two blocks, three blocks — about two blocks down. - Mhm. I didn't go to Osborn, but I used to go — I used to walk to this other school. It was like a mile and a
half, close to two miles away, because when we came up from Kansas City, we used to stay with my grandmother. My grandmother used to live on
the other side of 8 Mile [Road]. - Yeah. - On Warren. So, I started going to that school, and, like, it was the longest
I'd ever went to a school, like, six months, so I
started making friends, and it was real hard
for me to make friends when I was little, you know. - How come? - I mean, we changed schools a lot. - Mhm. - Like, we would change schools. The longest I had been in a
school was, like, three months. - Wow. - Just growing up, but as soon as we had moved up back from Kansas City, I believe I was, like, 11, we had moved in with my grandmother and I started going to
that school down there. I might have been 12. I got tired of getting up every morning, and my mother wouldn't drive me to school, I would have to walk to school. So, you know, like, in the
winter time, it was cold, you know? So, I just would skip school. I just didn't wanna go. And then I figured, like, I just want to rap. I just want to rap. - Mhm. he's a rapper, too. His name's Proof. He used to take me up in
the lunchroom at Osborn, and, like, the kids would
just, like, bet money and stuff. Like, we used to battle. I used to battle, like, a lot of kids in the school, a lot of other rappers and stuff. - Mhm. I used to rap really fast, and I don't think I was really saying much. - [Laughs] - But I was just rapping
really fast, you know? But 'cause I was rapping
fast, everybody just — I used to win every battle, like, you know. - [Laughs] - 'Cause it was just rap, like [gibbering], and other kids were rhyming slow, so — - [Laughs] You know, I figured the faster you
rap, the better you was. - So life is better now, right? - Yeah, life is definitely better now. - [Laughs] - I really don't — I don't
want it to get much better. - [Laughs] - Because then, I won't have
anything to rap about if it does, you know? - That could be a problem. What would happen if it just got so good that there was nothing bad to say anymore? Then the ballads would come out? - Yeah, then the love songs. - [Laughs]
Of course, all of them.
I hope so.
MTV got all the good stuff.