I have never been more dedicated, or worked harder on a CD, than I have with, “Smoke.” I spent a SOLID year developing this album. Immediately after finish mixing down my prior CD, ‘Have You Ever Lost faith in God,” I then started working on the project. Almost Half the poems were written a year before it’s release, but still, those poems were continually edited throughout that time period. Every poem has its own body of history to how it came about. There’s so much I wanted to say, honestly, I thought of turning this into a double CD, it ripped me apart to pull some of the poems off the project, hopefully, maybe one day they’ll be heard, but as for now, they went right into my vault. I tell people it took me 3 years to call myself a poet, and in retrospect it took me the same amount of time to have the guts to call myself a producer. For the first 4 months after getting new sounds for my Production Program, I gathered beats at a rapid pace, ending up with over 500, during that time. And now more than ever, I feel as though the music is a perfect fit for the assigned poems, and as always, there are times when the best things come when least expected. For instance, ‘Only in America,’ was originally going to be a live recording, but after coming up with the beat, I rearrange my process for the strength of the album. The Interludes were based off of wanting to give people a feel of what it is like to be in the studio, almost as if they were listening to the CD as it is being recorded. I wanted to show the process, what it is like looking for beats, or trashing poems, and the gossip and the talks of aspirations during studio breaks. Big ups to The Dri Fish, for assisting me in my process, and another big ups to my cousin, Mike Greggs for helping me with a few adlibs. I got to thank Amir Sulaiman, and Jamie DeWolf Kennedy, I am a true admirer of both of their work, in my eyes, they are some of the greatest, most passionate wordsmith in the world. Thank you for making this CD that much better. Someone gave me a tremendous compliment recently, telling me that a lot people make a CD like it’s a business, why give 20 tracks of hit poems when you can give 10, and in turn, thanked me for going full force on my last CD, with 20 plus tracks, full of amazing poems and experiences, and for not holding back and looking at it like a business. Deeply, I am thankful for the compliment, but tormented by it…because it only drives me to work harder. Whenever I work on a CD, Novel, or any project or production, the passion I put behind it, on some levels, could be close to insane, it’s a compulsive nature I have to try to top or give more of an effort than I previous gave on prior projects. And this CD…is no different. I never looked at it like a Business…I always looked at it like History…I mean, why not…after all…God is listening.