Logic recently sat down with MSNBC‘s Ari Melber for an episode of The Beat. They covered a myriad of topics, including his 2020 decision to retire only to return a year later with Bobby Tarantino III, thoughts on Joe Budden, one of his most outspoken critics, and protecting his mental health.
The 33-year-old rapper often finds himself at the mercy of the internet, most recently in March when he released a lounge cover of Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day,” which prompted Cube’s son, O’Shea Jackson, to respond.
“I respect Logic,” he tweeted at the time. “I think he can rap. And that’s all I really need. But bruh… if [I] ever hear you sing about my mother again… it’s gone be a misunderstanding lmaoooo.”
That essentially sums up Logic’s career. There’s no doubt he has rhyming skills, but people love to make fun of him. The seemingly endless ridicule is primarily what prompted the Maryland native to retire in the first place.
“Hip-Hop is a beautiful place,” he tells Melber. “It’s a culture of people that accept all people—every color, creed, race, religion, sexual orientation—Hip-Hop is all loving, all encompassing, all knowing. It’s like the perfect mother; always there for you. Now, media and other people can kind of sway how Hip-Hop is perceived. ‘You gotta be too tough, you gotta be this, you gotta be that.’
“A lot of my career I was told I’m not good enough, not Black enough, not this enough, not that enough, not cool enough—whatever. I am enough. I learned from legends in the game who’ve told me that. People like the RZA, members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Big Daddy Kane, Nas. I could go on. My heroes. For me, I stepped away from ‘Hip-Hop’ because of the negative aspect of things.
Logic continues, “A lot people say you gotta have tough skin, but it’s hard to have tough skin when people say they hope your baby dies or call your wife ugly and you have to subject yourself to this on camera. That’s why I left for my mental health. At the height of my career, I stepped back and realized that all I wanted to focus on at that time was my wife and my baby. I ‘left it all.’ Even though I didn’t realize I was lying to myself and I would be back in a year.”
He also admits he suffered from imposter syndrome at the onset of his career but ultimately realized he was trying to please all the wrong people.
“I think in many ways, I was lying to myself,” he says. “I just wanted to find peace and I did find it. For years, I was looking for the acceptance of others because in a big way I felt like a phony, a fraud, an imposter for whatever reason—and I don’t know why. Honestly, screw those people, if I’m being blunt. It’s a real mentality like, ‘Yo. I’ve made it. I’m here and all that matters is my baby is healthy and my wife loves me and I have a great family. So, all the other outside noise just doesn’t matter.”
Logic also talks about his next album, College Park. He explains: “College Park takes place in 2011. It’s a day-in-the-life with me, Castro, my producer Six and my best friend Big Lenbo who let me sleep on his couch when I was homeless and took me in. It’s like a day-in-the-life of us on our way to an open mic show in D.C. These aren’t skits, these are like scenes. It’s an audio-cinematic experience, and it’s just a different perspective.
Toward the end of the conversation, Melber has Logic participate in a lightning round of questions and one of them involved Joe Budden. In a 2019 episode of The Joe Budden Podcast, Budden described Logic as “easily one of the worst rappers to ever grace a microphone.” He’s encouraged his retirement since day one and the Ice Cube cover only made it worse. In fact, he called Logic’s music “really, really bad!!!”
But, with a smile on his face, Logic continues to transcend Budden’s criticism and instead, describes him as “a hurt man, a very smart man and a f###### hater.”
The Beat‘s interview with Logic airs on Thursday (May 11).