HHW: You had an opportunity to go on tour with Tech N9ne, tell us about that.
Flawless: When I came to Atlanta in 2010, I started doing open mics, jumping at every opportunity, didn’t care if it was real or not. I started standing out and winning. I won a competition with Hot 107.9 where I got to open for Birthday Bash in front of 20,000 people. I opened for Rick Ross and Ludacris. After that I started getting openings for other artists like Waka Flocka Flame and Gucci Mane, everybody in the Atlanta area. Tech N9ne came to town and we got to open for him through a mutual friend. At one point of the show he had to go to the bathroom, so he had to go through the crowd and he happened to see us rocking the show. After a couple months went by he reached out to get us on the tour and we did a 50-city tour. That’s when I realized I was chasing the wrong thing. I was out here trying to get a record deal when I really should’ve been trying to build my own brand as an artist. I started focusing on building my own empire. It was groundbreaking to see that.
HHW: When did Hip-Hop become a full-time thing for you?
Flawless: It never became full-time until recently, it was about how I was going to continue to grind. One grind was helping the other. I was working jobs for income, I always knew the jobs were temporary, I knew i had to invest in myself, so I had to work. I worked overnight jobs, 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. and stay up the whole day and hustle through the day, go to sleep from midnight to 3 a.m. and do it all over again. It became a routine for me. Most people who work 9-to-5’s get home and be too tired to work on their dreams, so I was cutting out the sleep and grinding during the day. People swore I didn’t have a job, but while they were sleeping I was real job working. That was my formula. I was unloading produce trucks. I worked and saved money to build my own set-up and teach myself how to record, engineer and mix my own music so I wouldn’t have to spend so much on making music.
HHW: Tell us about your “Doctor” video. Some percieve it as you trying to “save Hip-Hop.” Do you think something is wrong with it?
Flawless: The way I came up with that is, people that were commenting on my music were saying “you’re gonna bring it back” and “save hip hop.” So with “Doctor” I thought about the diversity of Hip-Hop and how it has changed. If you notice, the patient on the table is White, the father is Black and the doctor is Hispanic. There’s three ethnicities to show how far Hip-Hop has come. You have the NYC type rapper as the father, and he’s complaining about the state of Hip-Hop and how it’s become so different, so he’s like you got to “fix” him, something is wrong. So I’m doing operations and things like that. The video is showing how Hip-Hop is so diverse now. Is there something really wrong with him? Or is the dad saying something is wrong with him because it’s not what he thinks its supposed to be?
