With Rockie Fresh's debut mixtape as part of the MMG camp having dropped today, Complex decided to speak to the Chicago rapper about Electric Highway as well as working with MMG.
Rockie talks on the inspiration behind Electric Highway as well as advice he's got from Ricky Rozay, and more. Check out excerpts from the interview below, and head here for the full thing.
What's the inspiration behind 'Electric Highway'?
I’m at a point in my life—I’m 21 right now—and I'm seeing a lot things come to life pretty early but at the same time, I still have a lot of goals I want to reach. I feel like I'm on the road to my future. The Electric Highway title jumped out to me. It's something new that the government put in place for smart cars where they can charge their cars on the side of the road without going to gas stations, but that really doesn’t apply to me. I just really like the title, what I can make out of it, the vibe that I can set for people and that’s why I chose it.
Do you think the title accurately reflects the mixtape's meaning and content?
Based on my last project, people automatically expect more of a futuristic sound and I wanted to stick to that. But as far as the title Electric Highway, I wanted people to really listen to the music and kind of create what their own understanding of it is. The point of it was to give everybody the same conclusion which is that he’s at a point in his life where he’s trying to progress with certain things, he’s appreciative of what he has now and as human beings, I think we all reach that point where we're thankful for certain things that we get but then we always want more. And there's certain routes that we gotta take to get there. This mixtape is summing that process.
What knowledge has Rick Ross imparted on you? Does he help with your writing technique or beat selection?
He did a show at the University of Illinois and we was posted up in the hotel room and I always had this ability to freestyle, that's how I got into rap, just battling and playing around. But when I saw how he records when he was playing me tons of records that he worked on while on the road, he was just like, “This shit ain’t even finished, I just went in the booth and spoke.” The stuff he was saying, you could just tell it was so real to his life that he didn't have to write it. When I went back to the crib that's when I started recording most of the records for Electric Highway. Using that format, it just made my music become more real and the content that you’re getting is straight from how I feel being a 21-year-old man right now. For Ross to be in the financial spot that he’s in, for him being the age that he’s at, for the amount of albums that he has and the fact that he’s still recording tons of records a week, it makes me wanna be like, “If the big homie is doing that, I’m going to do that times two now.” That’s really what it is.
Do you have specific plans to work with other MMG artists—Wale, Meek Mill, Stalley?
I think everybody sound is so different and the thing about music...it’s crazy because hip-hop, we break ourselves into these different little pieces like this person is this type of artist but at the end of day it’s all music. I respect everything that each member on MMG does, as far as their different styles and I feel like if I mix that with my style and my type of lyrical content it could be something beautiful for the people. So I’m trying to work with everybody in the same amount.