You have been acting for some time with Mr. Robot, and you were in the Oscar-winning Two Distant Strangers, which was wonderful. What has this facet of your career been like? You were doing music for so long, and now you are in your acting era. How has it been different than your music career so far?
Well, it’s interesting. I just feel like all creatives eventually on this journey of life, being a creative or being an artist, eventually there are other avenues that appeal to you, and you just channel this creative energy into those other avenues.
For me, TV and film has shown me promise and has opened its doors for me, and that’s always an avenue that I had interest in even since I was in high school. So it’s really dope to see. When I was in high school, I had enough foresight to know that trying to make it as an actor in New York was damn near impossible. It’s like being a needle in a haystack, and music was always my first love.
So the foresight that I had, like, “Yo, I’m gonna focus on music, and I’m gonna get myself to a point where I’ll be able to leverage my music career into acting that way.” Because in my mind, it was the only way I could really get into this world, to like really have a presence without having to do all of the groundwork.
I went to high school for theater for like two years or whatever. But what I learned right away was that all of my peers—it was a culture shock for me—they’ve been in theater classes since they were babies. So for me, it was like, damn, to do all that groundwork and catch up so late, it was going to take me much longer. And music was right there. It was kind of the opportunity at that point in my life that was showing me promise and that was showing me results.
So I doubled down on that, and I was just like, “Yo, later on, I’ll leverage this into acting,” and it worked just like that. But I say that to say, as like simple of a thought that was for me as a kid, I realize now that I’m older that was somewhat of an anomaly, to have that kind of foresight and for it to just play in my favor like that.
That’s a genius plan.
To say the least, I’m just very grateful that this plan or this vision that I had was executed perfectly.
