I'm from Boston - everyone says 'awesome,' but there are a lot of people in Boston who say 'awesome.'

I'm just getting people warmed up a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, so I can fully come with, like, a 'Fix You' - type record, or 'One' by U2.

It was just me in my basement honing my skills, hearing songs on the radio and trying to manipulate them and then writing over those, and I started with local artists in Boston, writing records for them.

A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.

Common would come to my house and give me a freestyle verse. I'd make a new beat for it and put it with something else. That's how I met Eminem - he came to my house back when he first started. He gave me a bunch of freestyles, and that's how we built a relationship. Everyone came to my house.

As soon as I would say I'm from Boston, people would just say, 'Naaaah!'

Everybody kind of always bags on me because I use the word 'awesome' a lot.

To me, racism is so played out and corny and stupid, especially in music, where you now have Nelly doing songs with Tim McGraw, on the hit single 'Over and Over.' Anyone who thinks about that just needs to get a life.

Whenever I try to do something, I figure out what other people aren't doing or how can I do it different or how can I stand out.

People like Busta Rhymes would say, 'Clinton Sparks doesn't do mix tapes; he does albums. He just throws albums out on the street.'