Lloyd Banks chats to I Like Music

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• Lloyd Banks chats to I Like Music

ILM: Yeah, they've got crazy ears man.

BANKS: Yeah.

ILM: You've returned to your roots on this album; embracing the style and content that made your rhymes unforgettable on the mixtape scene. Can you describe the Lloyd Banks process of writing such good rhymes and making such good hip hop music?

BANKS: Y'know, my writing process is everywhere. It doesn't stay in one place. I write music on the tour bus, on aeroplanes, in my head on my way back and forth through the city, sometimes in the middle of an interview, when I've got breaks at the radio station, little things that come in to my head. My environment has a lot to do with that. I always sat down and spaced out, no matter how many things were going on around me, I'd space out and think and actually write records. I always wanted to be complex, not too complex, but complex enough to excite people and make them want to rewind and hear what you said again, and that comes from what kind of person you are. If you've got a style and a certain swagger to you, people respect you for it. I never wanted to be or sound like anybody else, so I think I'm really in my own zone. You have to write and you have to keep working, just like basketball players have to practice their jump shot; you just have to practice your craft.

ILM: Do you have any of your first ever narratives and poetry you wrote?

BANKS: Yeah, I've got a lot of things man. I always wrote a notebook. The books I was supposed to use at school I was writing in them what was going on around me. It wasn't even rapping up to that point, it was just me jotting down things real fast and after a long period of time I started to take the rap thing more seriously. It started off in 6th or 7th grade just me sitting there and writing in the classroom. I don't know if you'd call it poetry; it wasn't flowing the way it raps now.

ILM: You've achieved so much; in fact you were crowned Mixtape Artist of the Year award in 2004. Must've been awesome. What other ambitions do you have left to achieve?

Also See: ilikemusic.com

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