Anita Baker Sends Twitter Love To Andre 3000 After GQ Profile

Do you find that people enable you more than they would if you were just a dude with a job?

Yeah. Right now, the only people that keep me in line is my homies, like Swiff, the DJ. He’s like a super-, hyper-realist. He’s the kinda person that I can talk to. My stepfather is next in line. He’s kinda like that anchoring person. He’s been there since I was 5. He gave me my first job, actually, screen-printing shirts in his shop in Atlanta.

What were you doing for him?

Screen printing with the squeegees, and silk printing. He’s that next person in line. And once you don’t have that around, you can easily go astray, because, I mean, since age 17 people have catered to me and Big Boi. It’s strange when, your whole life, everyone has treated you different from everybody else. They say that if you’re an entertainer, whatever time you took off, you stay that age. I was 17. I wonder how my son feels. He was born into it, ’cause his parents are Erykah [Badu] and me. Even when people heard that we was having a kid, they was like, Oh, this kid is gonna be—

—a genie!

Before he even got here. I really hate it for him. You gotta understand, I’ve only written one check in my life. When I was 17, they still had checkbooks, and my mom taught me how to write a check and do my balance. So I had one check on my balance, and then OutKast took off. I have not paid a bill since. People ask, What does it feel like? As humans, we want attention. We want to be validated. At the same time, it’s strange attention, and a lot of it. If you have an excess of anything, it becomes strange.