You are one of the original ambassadors for Chicago, an area under a microscope right now because of all the new talent, what impresses you most about this wave of Chicago artists?

Twista:  I’m a fan of all of them, you know. When I was coming up, you could tell that we hadn’t really found our sound or the artists were still in the development stages. Where I look at the artist today that are fully into what they doing, the got the whole swag down pat: how they want to look, nobody’s unsure about how the want to present themselves, everybody into they music. Back then, I felt a little lonely. Like, man I’m one of the only ones to do it. And when I look out now across the scale and what’s happening in Chicago, I see all of the reasons I was so forceful in all of these verses telling people “Chi Town!” This is the reward for all of that. I’m just glad to see all the artists getting in the game and learning it as they go along. Proud of people like Lil Durk, King Louie and everybody doing what they doing. I definitely feel like an OG in the city.

A sore topic for Chicago right now is the violence. Statistics show that it’s dropping but the impact on the community is still prevalent. What do you think needs to happen to slow down the violence?

Twista: One thing that upsets me is that Chicago has to be the scapegoat for the violence that is going on in the urban communities. It’s really a countrywide thing. Now I understand how Compton and Louisiana felt when they were the scapegoat. But we need to promote more positivity, show more about the positive things that are going on and also be better mentors toward the kids. We also gotta give the children something to do. We going to have to find some funding or some paper from somewhere so we can build some youth centers or something.