How did you feel when bling-bling was added to the Oxford Dictionary?
Really that wasn’t even my type of… the song was just on the album. When they wanted to go with that as the second single, I didn’t want to. That ain’t me. I ain’t with all that flashy. But the game was hurting for something different. We came through with our own style. The song came out and took my album Platinum-plus. To us it was just something we came up with in the studio just fucking around. We started getting money and buying jewelry. Me and Fresh was in the studio and we was like, ‘Man you blinging.’ And he said ‘Nah, you bling-blinging.’ We just put it together.

The South is hot right now, and it seems you and Cash Money were at the forefront of this movement.
A lot of cats coming through the game now, taking what I did and doing it they way, like Young Buck and T.I. I like them. That’s my dawgs. I talk to them on a regular basis. They come after me, behind me. Even for a motherfucker like Scarface, who I come under, who I respect, who I look up to, when he reached down and say I respect you, you the man. I appreciate your music. When I got that, ain’t nobody else gotta respect me. Everybody in the game got respect for me and I respect them. They respect what I did, where I’m at, where I’ve been. It is what it is. They got the young cats coming in the game, telling they story and making money off of it.

Are you involved with other business ventures besides rap?
Yeah, cause this rap shit… If you got your shit set up right, it’s a way for young black dudes to come out the hood. If it’s meant for you, it’s going to happen. They got a couple million record companies in the industry and all of them feel the same way: that they the next to blow. But if you don’t work, you don’t eat. And there’s always someone who works harder than you. So you got to stay on your grind. Get what you can get out this game, and make those investments. If you got a fucked up situation, you could be selling a million records and not make $100,000. My situation, I ain’t gonna lie, when I first came here [to Koch] was fucked up. I’ve been rapping since I was 13 years old. But half of the things and half of the money I got don’t even come from rap. You gotta make sure your shit together.