The 23-year-old might have struggled for survival as a teenager in North Long Beach, and sure, wisps of his street-life past come up in a few songs on his acclaimed 2015 full-length Def Jam debut, Summertime ’06. But a few trunk-rattling beats and razor-sharp verses about the realities of life without economic options do not a gangster-rap resurgence make. Read more…

“Motherfuckers say Summertime ’06 was gangster rap, but that’s just whatever they say when they’ve never been [south of] the 10 freeway,” Staples notes, reclining on a leather couch at Hollywood’s EastWest Studios, where he recently finished recording his next album, Big Fish Theory, dropping June 23. “[Summertime] is not really that banged out to me, just to be real. Every nigger has lived that in the eyes of the people who like to call us ‘niggers’ when their door’s closed, so I don’t really care about that type of shit.”

Staples, dressed casually in a black hoodie and khaki-colored joggers and sipping on a cucumber-ginger limeade, spends the next few hours emphasizing how little he cares about what people think of his music in general, or his place in L.A.’s current hip-hop renaissance. He is not being coy about this indifference, either. He seems genuinely uninterested in how his music affects listeners or how it’s perceived by anyone once it leaves his hands.

“I don’t think too much about it. You walk to the canvas and you paint,” he says with an unwavering stare. “Art is a selfish thing.”

Check out the rest of the feature via LA Weekly.