Eddie Huang, the man behind ABC’s new hit series Fresh Off The Boat has achieved an enormous amount of success in his career. Eddie is a professional chef and the sitcom Fresh Off The Boat is based on Eddie’s life as a chef, but also his life as an Asian-American.

Interestingly enough, Eddie finds great inspiration from veteran rapper Jeezy, whose lyrics have ended up in Eddie’s novels multiple times. Wanting to get both of these two successful people’s opinions on American success, racism, etc., PaperMag got Eddie and Jeezy together to have a back and forth conversation about those aforementioned things. Here are some excerpts from their sit down:

Huang: Let me ask you this though: how have you dealt with acceptance and success? Because I have only recently been going through it, and I feel like acceptance is kind of the worst shit because you spent your whole life being the underdog.

Jeezy: I remember those long, cold nights just standing outside, hustling for school clothes and school paper and stuff like that, and going home to my grandmother’s house at five in the morning before school and knocking the roaches off the microwave to heat up the chicken that she cooked. I always think about how hard that was for me and what I lost, and that’s the thing that balances me out. I went from the kid on the block to having dinner with presidents and politicians and governors and even hood figures. And I can go from a Fortune 500 company and then walk through the Blue Flame strip club and get the same love, you know what I’m saying?

Huang: I always remember the hard work. My favorite basketball players are like Draymond Green, Matt Carroll, Khris Middleton… they work mad hard and they just play defense, get rebounds, but when they get an opportunity, it’s just shots. I always tell the people at the restaurant: keep your head up, work hard, grind, but when there’s an opportunity to come up, you have to take your shot.

Jeezy: Absolutely, and you can’t be scared to miss. If you miss your shot, when your next shot comes back around you gotta try it again.

Read the full interview here.