To drive though the streets of Manhattan to sign a record deal was like a movie. It was crazy - pretty hard to put into words.
What's interesting is often people think life changes when you have a record deal and you do all kinds of stuff. Obviously your life changes, but nothing changes your life like getting married and having kids.
I was turning 20 during my first record. Those decade birthdays always kind of cause me, it seems, to reflect, look back, and then look forward. I just was closing this period of my life where I was living in a car and scrambling my whole life to then signing a six-record deal with Atlantic.
I started DJing, breakdancing and MCing in the '70s and I got my record deal in 1979 with 'Christmas Rap.'
I started growing my hair in December '89. I was seventeen. I signed my record deal and said I ain't combing my hair no more. I don't have too.
I have a huge scarf from Hermes that I bought the day I signed my record deal. I had never had an Hermes scarf. And I ran to buy one, thinking, 'Now, this is a symbol, I need one, I need an Hermes scarf,' which actually now I'm quite embarrassed about. Most of the time I twist it so much that no one notices it, and just bundle it around me.
I had knockback after knockback before I got anywhere. After I got my first record deal I thought that was it, then Gut Records went into liquidation. I was 20. I had no idea what that meant. I had a few days to get myself out of that contract or my work would be owned by someone else.
I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.
You don't want the biggest record deal as far as money goes, you just want to make sure that the people at the label really support your band and the music and stuff.
And it took me about 11 years to get a record deal, and I just had to work around and come to terms with the fact that what I was doing was going to be different, and I just had to wait until somebody was ready to jump on the bandwagon.