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Too $hort owned up to his fatherly advice/XXL struggle and just dropped his 19th album, No Trespassing. But reaching that milestone is no big deal for the Oakland rap legend. Making music—and plenty of music videos, too—is just what he has always done, regardless of whether or not he was getting paid.

“I figured it out a long time ago. I came in the game with a lot of years under my belt as far as recording music,” $hort Dog tells Hip-Hop Wired. “When I started making records professionally, I had a stack of material. Just tons of stuff. In the early days I was just selling stuff on the streets. It was never a plan to be a rapper.”

$hort’s constant flow of music is why many hardly believed him when he announced his “retirement” before the release of his 10th album, Gettin’ It.

“I know it was my idea. When I mentioned it to Jive Records they just thought it was the greatest thing in the world,” said $hort, who admits his retirement was a promotional stunt. “I was in the middle of a contract. There was no way, all the money I was getting off of that, there was no way I was going to walk away from that.”

Watch Too $horts interview with Hip-Hop Wired below.

Additional reporting by Jade Martin

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Photo: YouTube