My pops and my mom started playing Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers and all these people, but at the same time, they always had Snoop on right behind it in the same mix.

My favorite artists always documented emotion. Marvin Gaye and Al Green and Sade and Aaliyah.

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales.

Christmas means a great deal to me. I was reared in a family that celebrated Christmas to some extent, but I married into a family that celebrated Christmas in a big way. And my wife always made a big thing of Christmas for the children. We have five children, and we had a terrific time at Christmas.

I understand the importance of bondage between parent and child.

My parents were fairly young in the city of Compton. So the things that they played – you know, that was the hip crowd. So I was being exposed to all these ideas, from Big Daddy Kane to Eazy-E to the Bay Area – Too Short, E-40 – you know, back to Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers.

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

What makes me happy is just curling up in with my mom in her bed and watching a marathon of ‚CSI‘ and ‚Grey’s Anatomy‘ episodes with pints of ice cream.

Snoop ain’t never cosigned me, but I know everybody is like, ‚That’s the next Snoop.‘ Nah, I’m Nipsey, and I got to work to define myself.

I raced with my brother from when I started to 2014 when I finished karting.

When I was a kid at four years old, that’s when I started amateur wrestling with my dad and family. And when that’s instilled in you, it never goes away.