After the success of the first album are you recording, you know readying for the second and is there a lot of pressure on you, you know a lot to live up to after the first?

Oh yeah. I think that the only thing for this one is the process is going to be a little different than the first because there is so much more stuff that I am doing now. I just finished up the Up Close and Personal tour. I head overseas for a minute and then after that I am about to do the Scream Tour, so I am trying to put together in the midst of all this.

After your first album, some think you should be used to the recording process and it should come easy.

No. I write from professional experiences. Through this year I have experienced more than I have through almost the majority of my life; there are just so many more experiences, from going overseas and meeting this person and meeting that person. I got a lot of new stuff to talk about and that is what my albums are always going to be about. My albums are going to mirror what my life was that year.

What keeps you grounded?

Mainly my family, you know my immediate family; my Mom, my sister and my crew, my click Compound Entertainment. I am not the man running around with six or seven yes men telling me what they think I want to hear. The cats that I roll with are pretty honest. If I do a song and it’s not hot, they are going to tell me its not hot. They don’t look at how much money I made, how many albums I done sold and that’s what I feel about these dudes, they real people. My Mom always reminded me to keep God first and thank him for everything that’s going on because without him none of this is possible and that’s all I need to keep in the forefront of my mind. After my record started doing well, every person I met was my new best friend; nobody had anything negative to say at first, everybody wanted to stay on my good side. Everybody was my friend and if you aren’t paying attention to what’s going on you can get caught up in all that thinking it is real.

Yeah a lot of people unfortunately surround themselves with yes men and have difficulty in understanding what is really needed.

That’s how you get these celebrities with these videos and these big egos because they start believing their own hype. I never ever believed in my own hype because I knew what it was, just hype. If my second album comes out and I sell twenty thousand units and that’s it, do you think I am going to get a phone call from half of these dudes, no. That is the reality of what I feel it is, I know what it is. Continued on page 4 »