I respect [Jay-Z's] retirement. People make a big deal about him getting on records and all this stuff and I don't want to be any kind of fuel to that fire.

It's called Fort Minor instead of my name because there is a bunch of other people involved in the project. But I only wanted to work with family and friends; people who I feel are really close to me and we see eye-to-eye. Besides that, Fort has a militant meaning and Minor in music is a smaller, darker, sadder note, so the name is a reflection of the music.

I'd call it an organic hip-hop style, musically. Back in the late '80s and early '90s, people sampled a lot, and because of that these records had a feel. They weren't recorded in a computer with a click track. . . . When I was approaching this record, what I wanted to do was try and get back to that, but I write music, I play music, so I wanted to write every note, record every note and play every note, and get that kind of hand-played feel.

I grew up painting and playing piano so when I was a little kid I thought I was going to be an artist or a painter but my mom had me taking piano lessons for about 10-12 years as a young kid.

My dad remembers being in school with my uncle, and the teacher would say outright to the class that the Japanese were second-class citizens and shouldn't be trusted.

I know at one point I had bright red hair and I had bracelets from my wrist up to my elbow and I was wearing size 50 pants. I wouldn't wear that today, but I'm not embarrassed about wearing it back then any more.