When asked to assess himself, Ali is just as generous. Just don’t mistake it as arrogance. “I never said I was the best rapper in the world, I feel like I’m one of em, but in terms of song writing, along with rapping, along with live performance…in my particular equation, nobody can fuck with me. All ego’s aside, that combination, nobody can fuck with me.”

The inevitable major label question always comes up when an indy artist garners significant attention. “The way I’ve understood it,” Ali explained. “They were originally interested in Atmosphere and their policy has always been they wouldn’t do an artist deal, only a label deal. So then its like ‘alright, lets hear who else you got’ and when they come to my shit they got really interested. But it has to be all of us. They’re the reason that I’ve had these opportunities. Slug paid me $100 a show last tour out of his own pocket, he knew that my being there didn’t bring in an extra $100. That’s like $6000 out of his pocket over the course of the tour. That is just how it is at Rhymesayers.” That isn’t to say that Ali wouldn’t like some of the perks provided by a major. “The people who love underground rap think that every mainstream rapper is violating their integrity by being on a major label, and they do in a way because of the money involved. They don’t realize that we don’t get to do a lot of the things we’d like to do without that money. I might want to have Erykah Badu or the White Strips on my album, not to sell more records but just because I think I could make something dope with them. Independently, I can’t afford to do that. I also feel that there are a lot of people out there who would identify with my music that will never get a chance to hear it. That is just something you have to deal with.”

It’s ironic that one of the most asked questions has been ‘where can Ali go after ‘Shadows on the Sun?’ It doesn’t take long to realize that Ali is an extraordinary man who is going to go where ever he chooses. He is casting shadows on the sun because the sky is the limit.