How did it feel to get all this stuff off your chest after so long?

It felt good. To me, it doesn’t really move me because I’m okay either way. But I feel like the fans appreciated that song more than I could ever appreciate it.

Because someone’s finally telling it.

Yeah. Man, I don’t want to get too personal, but it hurts my heart, seeing him out here by himself. There was a dude that he knew from back in the day who came to the sessions, he was vibing with us. When Ye offered to take him home, we learned he was homeless. Man, a week later this man’s living in a $3 million house in Calabasas. He ain’t got no money to furnish it or nothing.

But that’s not in public. And I’m talking about a thousand situations like that. That’s how I got my Bentley. I wish I could tell you a lot of the stories, if everybody gave me permission to tell their stories, y’all would look at him, like, “I’ll take a little red hat.”

How are you funneling all this energy into yourself?

Well, I’m transitioning out of the music industry. I want to do more executive work. I’m doing a lot of songwriting lately. I have a computer full of beautiful things that I’ve never got to put out because it’s either samples or artists not clearing it or just the label doesn’t want to put the budget behind it. When I was at Def Jam they really just wanted me to help Ye and not really focus on myself.

So now I’m like, let me just give my fans in the world who I truly am. I’m going to release this mixtape-style, how I used to do. We never cleared anything back in the day, when I got a Kendrick verse or Childish Gambino verse, I never had to go to their labels and clear it. I’m just going to use social media, YouTube, direct-to-consumer. Give the music out, give it away. Don’t even sell it. And then if somebody wants to put this stuff out, they’ll come to me and we can work it out.

So that’s what we’re building up to with your album, Mr. EGOT?

Well, I have Mr. EGOT ready, but hopefully the powers that be or somebody comes in and says, “The world really wants to hear this. What do you need for it?”

Break that title down for me.

So, Emmy Grammy Oscar Tony. Right? The man who coined the phrase EGOT is Philip Michael Thomas, the African-American guy that was on Miami Vice. And everybody would look at him crazy, like, “You’re not winning no Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, or Tony.” He never won any award, he never was nominated. But now 40 years later, everybody is running around, saying it. So that was something that stuck with me. I [also] have never won anything.

So I just took on that story and took on that persona of him trying to win that, and I put that in the music to show how especially a Black artist, it’s a struggle for us to get on these platforms and get nominated for these awards. I wanted to be that voice of that artist/actor/entertainer that is really putting their best foot forward in all these genres of entertainment and trying to achieve the highest awards you can achieve.