Queens rapper and all-around hustler says he can’t afford to be depressed. He contends that mental health issue is a “luxury.”

In an interview with Los Angeles rap vet and radio icon Big Boy, the 47-year-old rapper said, “I think depression is a luxury. Where I’m from, you can’t afford to be depressed.”

While promoting his new BMF show and some of his other ventures, the “In the Club” chart-topper continued, “You gotta pay the bills, right? So, you gotta go to work,” he said. “You gotta get up, gotta go do what you gotta do. You got people right now that’s at work that don’t feel like being there. But they got responsibilities.”

“When these guys get in a slump and they just decide they’re not gonna do anything — I’m like, ‘Where they do that at?’ ” he said. “I think the things you go through make you who you are.”

He also talked about everything from Kanye West to Elon Musk buying Twitter and then saying he actually has to apologize to Megan the Stallion for saying Tory Lanez didn’t shoot her.

One thing that hit home was talking about the Master P and Lil Romeo tiff online and comparing it to his relationship with his oldest son Marquise.

“Well, I think that their situation is different,” 50 said. “I think they may have some like a disagreement but they’ll be back to being Master P and Romeo we know.”

He further spoke about how Master P was one of the first people to put him on, calling him “prolific.”

“You see how Snoop has respect for Master P? He’s one of those guys,” he said before telling a story about how the No Limit soldier put him on tour for the first time.

“He was slick big. He came he gave me the money for eight shows, right? We did four of them. Then he said, ‘Oh man something happened we got time to take a break. We just come back and do the other four later. When I came back to do the other four, I had already sold 2,000,000!”

50 Cent said the OG knew he was going to be a huge star.

Jersey rapper-turned-podcaster Joe Budden says label owners like Gucci Man (and by extension his wife Keyshia Ka’Oir) are a part of the problem with Hip-Hop over the last 10 years.

The “Pump it Up” chart-topper said on his hit podcast that one of the reasons rap music has been so popping is because the “keeping it real” element is being lived out through the unfortunate deaths, RICO cases, and overdoses that have plagued the culture recently.

He said, “Who people are signing, how people are signing them, and why people are signing them needs to be under thorough examination.”

“I think all parties involved in the music business [should look at music] the same way that in sports last decade when injuries started happening at a rapid rate that they had never seen before and studies and new science showed that the game was affecting players bodies differently,” he continued, offering, “So, they started coming up with all these new theories like shorten the season or let’s make the playoffs smaller.”

Budden suggests people should fall back and look at the rap world over the last decade with the same level of concern and have a desire to put something in place to help shift the phenomenon.

The thought leader said, “The same thing has happened in rap in the last decade. We have never seen this many people die. We’ve never seen these many shootings, stabbings, arrests, clique beef, RICO charges. I have never seen it in Hip-Hop and it runs concurrent for me with the death of the A&R and the death of musicianship.”

“I say Gucci mane’s scouting needs to be under report I mean under examination it’s because this is now what 8,9, 10 … I don’t know … but a whole roster that is just suffering from the ‘Different Strokes’ curse. And I don’t think it’s coincidence anymore.”

The artist, who got his start in Def Jam in the early 2000s said the culture is even “scary” to him.

“It don’t matter that one of them made a good song and now sold however many millions,”  he said n this “new space” life expectancy for rappers is even shorter than already was years ago.

He said he was not tiptoeing around the issue. “These n##gas, sign n##gas. They get their money. They take their money and do something else with it. Now, we bought a bunch of guns. We have tanks. Now, we have reason to be in every city around the globe. We have reasons to move with 80 and 90 people, SWAT protection,” he said.

“There is a reason this is going on and it is not so music based.”

Drake won’t be required to testify in XXXTENTACION‘s upcoming murder trial. Mauricio Padilla, Dedrick Williams’ defense attorney, attempted to get the judge to perpetuate a deposition from Drake inside a Broward County courtroom on Tuesday (January 10). According to Local 10 News, Padilla claimed Drake and people associated with him—including Akademiks—had issues with the late rapper.

Williams and Padilla made the request for Drake and Akademiks’ participation last month. The court docs, obtained by AllHipHop, said: “The testimony of the said Aubrey Drake Graham is material to the case, and it is necessary to take the deposition of the said Aubrey Drake Graham to prevent the failure of justice.”

The judge ultimately denied the motion, saying there was “no need” to make an order to force Drake or Akademiks to be deposed. All parties later agreed no one would be permitted to wear graphic t-shirts during the trial for or against any of the defendants or XXXTENTACION.

The state also attempted to prevent the defense teams from disparaging XXXTENTACION‘s character, but they fired back, saying Assistant State Attorney Pascale Achille’s request was “too broad.” They said Achille could use it to prevent them from saying XXXTENTACION was involved with people who may have wanted to harm him, arguing it “shows intent not character.” The judge decided he’d deal with that issue during trial.

Williams’ co-defendants, Michael Boatwright and Treyvon Newsome, were also in court on Tuesday ahead of testimony, which begins on Wednesday (January 18).