Most of us thought the Unit would never break up in the first place, then thought you guys would never get back together, but now it’s a reality. How does it feel?

Lloyd Banks: You said it right, man. I never imagined all of the achievements and how far we would actually go. It was a point where I was just happy to be a part of the group. When you come from where I come from, you don’t have much, so what we do have, we share amongst each other, whether it was the club or food or whatever it was. Before we even started to really make it, 50 pulled me aside and told me what he thought I could do as a solo artist, so we were kind of all put out there early and groomed a lot faster than your average artist. But I feel blessed to be able to come back in the nick of time for real. I’m only three albums in, I don’t feel like I’m eight albums in or something.

After the first wave of interviews, you personally said you took time away from music because it was boring and uninspiring. Has that changed at all?

Lloyd Banks: I always recorded, so I never got to that point where I wasn’t inspired enough to actually make music. But as far as the presentation and the time slot, I’ve gotten the opportunity to be a little more picky. I never really had that luxury of watching the game and seeing how it moves and picking my spot. I was kinda in a situation where if you’re sitting on a major and you’re on a schedule, you kinda gotta strike or you don’t know when you’re gonna get a chance to strike again. I didn’t want to be running in place with the rest of the industry. At the end of the day, I love competition, man. It’s not fun to be out there and feel like there’s nobody really interested in the culture the way that you are.

In the past we’ve heard the likes of Kanye and even Eminem say that you’re one of the best rappers of all time. How does that feel?

Lloyd Banks: Man, that fucked me up. Definitely when [Eminem] said it. I’ve had the opportunity to play all of my albums for Em and he’s been involved with production on all of my albums or participated. I would always fly out to Detroit and go to the Piston games and kick it and just talk about music for hours. Last time I went out there to play him Hunger For More 2, that’s when he told me I’m one of the greatest ever and it’s just little things like that just lights another fire.

The thing you guys have been preaching the most is your independence from the major label. Internally speaking, how do you guys determine what songs get picked and when things get released?

Lloyd Banks: It’s mainly a collective thing and us just bouncing ideas off of each other. Like Buck’ll tell you himself — I urged him to drop the Before The Beast project because he just had so many records at that time and it only made sense with the type of music we were dropping. It’s funny you say that, because we were just talking the other day about how we all kind of come up with dates in our own mind so nobody’s stepping on anyone’s toes and then we work around the dates. But as far as me critiquing myself, it’s never been nobody else’s call or a reason why I didn’t put out music other then me being my own biggest critic.