When you were working on the album, how many times did the people you reached out to for features say, “No, thank you”? I don’t usually ask for features like that. There are too many other wins to be upset. Drake, with this huge album and the most first-week sales of the year. Everybody was like, “One-hit-wonder this, one-hit-wonder that.” And now it’s amazing that my competition was Drake. Nobody even thought that I would be here. Then I got out of it, and all I thought about was how blessed I am. I’m sure you felt that when your album, Montero, didn’t go No. I know a lot of people see that as a bad thing, but people have to work harder to stay in this place. I feel like it’s knocking down the walls. Why do you think it does? Because there’s a new age of celebrities, and I don’t think a lot of people are comfortable with it.
What’s wrong with “influencer,” though? Why does influencer have such a bad connotation? On the internet, they call me an “influencer playwright,” and that’s their way of diminishing me and what I do. Because part of the reason my play Slave Play got so popular was because I worked outside of the normal bounds of what people do in the theater.
