The most vivid memory of hip-hop that I have is my uncle Brod, he took me to the Fresh Fest when it came to the Greensboro Coliseum. This had to be like ’85, ’86. It was RUN-DMC, the Fat Boys and Whodini, and yeah, I think my fate was sealed after seeing that. My uncle bought me a Fat Boys T-shirt. I remember Run going back and forth across the stage, just the stage presence. Whodini — God, rest in peace, Ecstasy. He came out, he had the hat on, “Freaks Come Out At Night,” all of that. I remember just feeling that energy and being like, “Yeah, this is what I want to do.”

The biggest influence on how I rhymed was probably Big Daddy Kane. I always liked how Kane was. He was kind of every man, he could do it all. He could battle, he could talk to the ladies. He could be the mack, the cool pimp guy, whatever. He was smart. He would dance. He was the total package. And so my mic technique was definitely influenced by Kane, and that school of Kool G Rap, Rakim, that’s the cloth that I’m cut from in terms of that super precise flow. Sonic-wise, my biggest inspiration was A Tribe Called Quest. I wanted to rap like Kane, but I wanted our records to sound really lush and kind of beautiful, like a Tribe album, you know what I mean? That was kind of my M.O. and still is in a lot of ways, I think.

The hip-hop that I was raised on, a lot of it was Native Tongues. The Jungle Brothers, A TRIBE CALLED QUEST, De La Soul, and even Pete Rock and CL Smooth and Heavy D. There was always an element of singing of vocals in it. To me, it just felt like a natural extension of the records that I grew up listening to. I was born in ’78, so my mother, she always played R&B: Luther, Patti, Stevie. On our first album, “The Listening,” our first single, that’s me singing the hook.

If there was an album that was important to the way I worked, I would split the difference between two albums: “De La Soul Is Dead,” and “Death Certificate” by ICE CUBE. I mean, “Death Certificate,” that was a movie on wax. It was no surprise to me that Ice Cube was able to transition into being a director and screenwriter, because he was making movies on his records back then. “Death Certificate,” I mean, I played the words off that album. Nowadays, I think sampling-wise, it would kind of be impossible to make. Well, impossible to legally make. And “De La Soul Is Dead” for reasons that, I mean, are kind of obvious, I can’t say enough about just how much I love that album, how much it influenced me.

When we were coming out, this was ’01, ’02, peak Soulquarians era. So this is the Roots, it’s Slum Village, it’s Common, it’s Black Star. It’s what Rawkus was doing at that time. I was very adamant on, “Listen dude, we’re not competing against other artists in North Carolina or other artists in our city. We’re competing against ‘Fantastic, Vol. 2,’ we’re competing against ‘Like Water for Chocolate.’ We’re competing against ‘Black on Both Sides.’ If we ain’t got nothing that’s coming with this level of smoke, then we just need to leave this alone, because that’s what we’re up against.”

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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz