How do you reframe failure in a way that actually helps you grow instead of letting it chip away at your confidence? And how can you get back to taking risks when failure starts to feel more discouraging than motivating? From Leo, who's in his 20s in Ohio.

First of all, I would tell Leo that that is normal to feel, to have some type of feeling if you don't get something that you, that you wanted.

I can also tell Leo that, that he was qualified enough to be on, on their radar, but, um, may not be what they needed at the time.

I can also tell him that a company should not let him know what his value is, that the company could li- that, you know, they, they didn't define his full potential.

They literally could have been looking for something else.

And also, the confidence comes when you show up for yourself.

I- it's not about the wins.

Well, let's, let's hear it.

Podcast with, podcast with Halo, how that came about, bro.

Halo is an extraordinary, yet a different, unique kid who I did not...

I was almost tired of bragging on this dude.

I would go out and be like, "My son this, my son that." And so I came up with a idea to do this podcast platform where he could just get on there and just be himself.

We never have scripts, we never have...

Everything is straight improv.

We just off the top.

How was that?

Mm-hmm.

Done stuff like that, as y'all know recently.

So I mean, when I think about it, it's like he wasn't there to teach me certain things that a man should know, and I learned a lot of things on my own.

And, you know, he was my first hero.

He's my first somebody you look up to, whether he was incarcerated or just me hearing stories about him, and me just realizing that that DNA is inside of me.

So when I passed that on, I think I broke that, that way of thinking.

I think it stopped with me, you know? Um, I'm not lenient to where I'm like, "Man, you can cry anytime you want," but if my son needs to cry about something that's bothering him or hurting, I'm not, like, getting all up on him about it, so.

Mm.

Like...

[laughs] So I'm, I'ma tell you another pop story.

So Pop, my pop used to go in the store, and he used to steal.

And then he used to get mad at me because he would just stop abruptly, and then I would hit him in the back of his Achilles with, like, the buggy.

When I hit him in the back of the leg with a buggy, he'd get mad as hell.

He'd be like...

And so then I'd get, like, 30 feet away from him.

Like you actually listened to it and it still led you somewhere where you was like, "This, this is not what I thought was gonna happen."

Are we going to make it happen? Absolutely.

And although I have a great sense of humor, this is a really endearing side of me when the book is very introspective.

I think people see my image a lot, but they don't really know my intention.

You know what I'm saying? They see the flash.

They don't know that I got a real foundation.

You know what I'm saying? And so...

It wasn't about me just putting a book out to talk about my early childhood development.

I want to deviate for a high second.

How young were you when you realized, wait a minute, this is God talking to me?

So I don't put God, I don't put God to it too, super recently.

So what happened with the book is, I wanted to write a book about something, not just an autobiography, and I wanted it to have some type of substance, and I also wanted it to tap into an audience outside of hip-hop.

So, me having a concept like intuition, I'm telling some stories, and when I tell the story and i trace it all the way back it's a voice that told me boy you ain't got no business going it told me before i got there or it told me to do so a lot of the stuff i thought about was either like whether it was a trauma or even a celebration i trace it back in my mind and it and it literally and so then i started Then you start hearing you made an image of God and God is in you, all this stuff.

And then another thing that I felt like was super relatable to people is like how we say, you know, man, something told me I was going to run into something.

Oh, you feel somebody, you know, I just feel like what if that happened? It's like whatever you believe in, obviously, but what if that's God in you, like whispering or whatever, just saying like, man, you know, this ain't, it's time to go.

It don't mean somebody finna shoot the place up, but sometimes it's

and letting your child fly we talked about your daughter you're about to let her fly going to college but how do you um use that metaphor with your children now

Uh-huh.

Me giving credit to, to something higher than my ego.

In this book, I talk about how the voice in my head, which is, I assume is intuition, I assume that it's God, because they say God is inside of you, and, you know, um, blessings come from within.

So this is just my presentation to the world, and hopefully it helps someone, um, make decisions, helps them make decisions based on their own divine guidance.

Wait.

It's very, very, very important to me.

I'm the author of this book.

It's called The Voice In My Head Is God.

What is the thesis you want to get across? What do you want people to take away from this book?

This is my first piece of literature that I'm putting out for the world to see and to consume.

It's called The Voice in My Head is God.

The book is not so much a religious book.

It's about intuition.

It's about me using intuition as a sixth sense.

The voice in this title speaks to my conscience, my intuition, and then when I say God, it's me giving credit to someone much higher than myself, me giving credit to something higher than my ego.

story, though? I just wanted to know

He a secret soldier.

Yeah.

He, so he run.

He generally trying to get in front of buddy.

He definitely tried to get in front of buddy, and um, he starts shooting.

And then I swear I said to myself, I said, "Is he, is he shootin-"I'm saying like, damn, I don't, I don't, I don't even...

You know what I mean? And with the sag and the meat.

Um, how did intuition guide you out of that situation?

innovate audio books or invest in things or or create other things that's interesting

yeah yeah i have a chapter called remind them by rebranding and it's just if you start to get that business mentality you start noticing how businesses operate most of the top businesses that we see out here they rebrand themselves every three to five years Right.

They don't necessarily change the slogan, but they the logo changes something.

Something changes just to keep, you know, for refreshing, whether it's Sprite or McDonald's, whatever it is, whatever corporation.

They do little small things.

So I started implementing those things into my career to just give it a boost and give it that refresh.

This book, The Voice in My Head is God is about my intuition and tapping into that inner voice.

At

Yeah, man.

Just, man, my commitment and my resilience, man.

I'm self-motivated, you know, like you can't, you can't, can't buy the motivation.

You can't buy ambition.

You know what I'm saying? So through my self-evaluation, man, I get up and I just got that energy like I'm him and I can just reach heights.

And early on, I was one of those, I was one of those that was arrogant before I got in the game.

I used to look at everybody in the game, look at, you know, all my peers and be like, I can get with this person.

a

What's it like coming from Atlanta from day one? How many years you been rapping now and, and in your career, and you've seen so many people blow up from Atlanta or before you? What's that like being from there?

Just being from the city, I was able to see it evolve, go through many eras, go through heavy bass driven, heavy, um, maybe dance driven to, to the trap, to, you know, the, all the different eras, but they all still very much remain in today's music.

Parts of it, like DNA from it.

And just having Atlanta as your landscape coming up I think builds resilience and also gives you discipline, and you gotta be able to adapt, you know what I'm saying? Coming from Atlanta, like it just, any given day these situations will change.

So I think adapt- Build a, uh, what am I trying to say? Being able to adapt is, like, an advantage coming from Atlanta.

You know, once you leave the city, you're able to take those, the skillsets that you learned in the city and just apply to every room.

I know I have.

Somebody might shoot up the place

Somebody might shoot up the place

...

so when I'm putting something out to the world, this is like something for my community to try to tell a player, like, it's okay to, like, hush down the noise and listen to that voice and actually believe it.

Like, the voice is like, it, it warns you before.

I mean, it comes before trauma, ego, fear, any of that stuff, right? But you can't see what it's trying to...

So you gotta kinda have faith on, like, whatever it's trying to tell you, right? 'Cause it's like, "Hey, I'm telling you."Keep straight.

But you don't know why it's telling you to keep straight instead of turning left, you know what I mean? And, and I'm really, I tell you, I have this voice and this ...

That's fire.

Right.

And so my realtor would tell me.

that compared to the rest of the United States in comps that one day we're gonna look back and we're gonna wish we bought certain things because that's fairly cheap for prime real estate.

So I thought I'd get this spiel over and over about just trust me, man, you're gonna regret certain things.

I bought a couple of pieces of land in downtown Atlanta in this historic place called Castleberry Hill.

I had like three buildings.

Don't have any ideas at this point.

No, you seem very confident.

Mm-hmm.

And so, um, at, I, when I went to school, I, I got into some trouble my senior year, um, at North Clayton High School, and it deterred my, my route.

Like I, I was gonna go to like Memphis.

I was gonna go to another school, but I ended up going to, uh, Alabama State playing basketball.

And when I went, you know, full scholarship because I had the grades, when I went, the coaches that recruited me at the time, they got fired.

So as soon as I got to the campus, the people that was just talking so much, you know, so many good, saying so many good things about me, um, they ended up leaving.

And then another coach came in, brought in other players, and I just remember not loving basketball anymore.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Whether he was incarcerated or just me hearing stories about him, and me just realizing that that DNA is inside of me.

So when I passed that on, I think I broke that, that way of thinking.

I think it stopped with me, you know? Um, I'm not lenient to where I'm like, "Man, you can cry anytime you want," but if my son needs to cry about something that's bothering him or hurting, I'm not, like, getting all over him about it, so.

I think it's just timing and where we are in life right now.

I don't know how you are with your kids, but I'm a little bit more sensitive to my kids-

Mm-hmm.

Because I...

How did you have that so young? Like, doing so many different things, from college to being in the streets, to rap, like-

So I'm, I'ma tell you another pop story.

So Pop, my pop used to go in the store and he used to steal.

And then he used to get mad at me because he would just stop abruptly, and then I would hit him in the back of his Achilles with, like, the buggy.

When I hit him in the back of the leg with a buggy, he'd get mad as hell.

He'd be like...

And so then I'd get, like, 30 feet away from him, and then we'd get in the car and he'll start taking stuff, like, out his sock.

Like you actually listened to it, and it still led you somewhere where you was like, "This, this is not what I thought was gonna happen."

What inspired you to write the book at this point in your career?

I think the inspiration behind writing the book was the timing.

The inspiration is this type of book comes when you live through enough experiences.

When you, you know, it comes when you, I think, occurs some wisdom.

And it's something that I would like to do for my community.

I feel like this is almost a community project.

And it's a way where I can talk about the voice that I've really been hearing in my head and how I can really try to articulate that blessings come from within.

What's the takeaway from this book? When a person buys the book, what do you want them to have as a takeaway?

Because, because of that right there, because it's coming from a person like yourself, do you think when the book comes out that it's going to be a little surprising from some people to hear from you like this?

Yeah, because I think when you have a title like God, people may, uh, you know, automatically think about religion.

And sometimes it'll turn people on, and it could ob- obviously turn people off.

But I think this book is more about awareness.

It's about recognizing a divine guidance that we all have in our everyday life, doing business, heartbreak, you know, any kind of relationship.

So this is what I, you know, I would like to, uh, get my point across with this book.

I, I do feel like it came from a, a serious place.

Mm.

Why right now get so personal and, you know, divulge so much? Like what was the conversation that you're having with that voice that made 2 Chainz want to open up about so many things in this book?

Well, a lot of the things I think that I went through when I was younger, I'm embarrassed to talk about.

I'm embarrassed to revisit.

And I look at a lot of the art that I'm putting out now in this A Former Peel, you know, with Red Clay, my short film peels, but the relationship I had with my mom growing up that I, that when I, it's in a festival run right now, so that's why people can't see it.

But when I did the festival in Atlanta and I had like a media reel stage and a Q&A, when I did my Q&A, I noticed that I had my head down because I had friends in the crowd and I had relatives in the crowd and I was truly, truly, truly embarrassed.

And then when I did another, say one in Denver or another festival, I was able to keep my head on my chin because the room that didn't know me and I felt like I didn't care what their opinion was.

Now, as you rap and talk about the voice in your head and it, you know, how it got you here where you are right now, what would you tell any of these young creators, people in the audience who are struggling with really tapping into the voice in their head that are listening?

I think we all have heard, "This is what it is, okay? This is the nothing.

And everybody had it.

Yeah, and shine.

I can actually say I saw that with my eyes, and you know, the prices on the streets was different and everything, you know.

And I was in my...

I was selling weed at the time, so it was like I wasn't even in the same game that they was dealing in.

So I just wanted to...

I just wanted to get...

The grand...

He's like, "I appreciate it." (laughs)

I sure appreciated it because I- when I did work with Eminem, I couldn't smoke in there.

They put my s- (laughs) When it was time to work with Eminem, it was actually kind of, kind of funny.

When it's time to work with Eminem, they put...

And this is his people.

It's not Eminem.

Em- Eminem is somewhere writing.

Do you have an opportunity? Do you sit back and just think about what you have accomplished in your young career?

Mm-hmm

... as far as paving the way for myself, as far as being, you know what I'm saying, man, that was a legendary guy who, who was out here really hustling bags or doing what people may yap about on albums.

Like, people know.

Like, I would, I would be on the road doing shows for Duffle Bag Boyz and come back and pick up.

You know, I would go out there and make 500 or something, 1,000 a show, but come back and pick up, like, 20 bands.

Nah, nah.

Y'all gonna kick it with him one day.

Yeah.