HHW: You work with a lot of different producers ranging from Jake One to Girl Talk and a lot of little known producers. How do you like this experience? You came in the game signed to Roc-A-Fella, and you pretty much had to work with Just Blaze and Kanye West, which isn’t a terrible thing.
Freeway: [laughs] Right, that was not a bad thing. With Free Will I worked with these new producers Scholito and S. Frank and we went into another zone. It’s a fresh energy and I felt like I was in the same kind of zone I was in with the Just Blaze’s and Jake One’s. It’s a blessing to be able to work with so many different producers. That’s the space music is in right now, if you got heat, we working. Don’t matter if you’re fat, skinny, Black, Asian. If it’s heat we working. My main thing is as long as it’s heat.
HHW: You also get to work with artists that many people don’t expect you to. You did a whole project with Tha Jacka before he passed. How did that pairing happen?
Freeway: I was on tour with Jay Z back in 2002. We had a show out in the Bay and Jacka reached out and wanted to buy a verse. I went to his hood and we just connected. I felt like they was doing the same things we were. Plus, his music was dope. Jacka is one of my favorite artists, the way he came up with different flow patterns and the things he did with his voice amazed me. I miss him, I think about him a lot. He was good person with a good heart. He’d give people the shirt off his back, I saw him do it.
HHW: Last year you were diagnosed with kidney disease and rushed to a hospital. That was a shock for fans, so it obviously had to be a shock for you, too. How did it get to that point?
Freeway: A lot of people don’t know about kidney disease.. The main thing about any disease is getting the knowledge and knowing what’s going on. In 2012, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and diabetes. Those are the leading risk factors for kidney disease and I didn’t know. That that wasn’t explained to me. So, I was taking my medicines and thinking I was fine, so I went back to eating what i usually ate. Cheesesteaks and stuff I wasn’t supposed to. But if I had the knowledge, I could’ve been dieting differently and prolonged the inevitable.
HHW: So you, a Philadelphian, can’t eat cheesesteaks anymore?
Freeway: I mean, I can, just not everyday. But I can’t eat french fries, ketchup, bananas, broccoli. Imagine going to get a burger but can’t get no fries.
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