CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD

I met Chamillionare some years ago in Puerto Rico. He wasn't a star then, well at least not the international star he is now.
But he was well known in the Houston Rap scene as being the Mixtape Messiah. He was rolling with his younger brother Razaq, The legendary O.G. Ron C & Austin's Dj Rapid Ric. I'm talking about years ago when the brother had diamonds missing from his chain. I'm talking about the five of us sneaking into the atlantic records Showcase through the back door, telling the kitchen staff that we were performing, which of course we were not. We hadnt even paid the registration fees for the event (Mix Show Power Summit), so we had no badges and had to do the "shimmy shimmy ya" where ever we went. It wasa pleasure to get up with Cham years later to talk about a buit more than his platinum success.  
H.I. Tell us about your upbringing:

CH:Yea, when I was coming up, it was kind of crazy, you know because my Dad was Muslim.  He wasn’t just like.. He was a real big Muslim. He was the president of Muslim Association of Houston. Hakeem Olajuwon went to his mosque.  So he was  the real dude. And my mom was the complete invert. Growing up seeing that as kids, my brothers all of us we would just have to make decisions all the time. So our dad would take us to the mosque and my mom would sneak us out the mosque early to go to church. So it was real crazy. They wasn’t big on rap. There wasn’t no rap music, you know even basketball, they let us out for a couple of hours you know what I’m saying, and we would have to come home before the lights on.

H.I. Tell me about the writing style that you developed over the years?

CH: Like  I said my dad didn’t really like the rap game so he would come in and get mad, because I had the rap on the table. So what I would do, I would teach myself to write real sloppy. I’d start  writing real sloppy so when he’d come in he would think it was school work.   He would think my school work was out you know what I’m saying. He just never had a trace on the whole rap game. You know, with a rebellious child, that’s what they do.  When they’re told not to do something, they go do it.

The rap game kind of interested me, so i could get myself away from all the bad stuff that was going, they was arguing..I’ve been writing sloppy for so many years that I can’t write neat now. In life  you’re going to have a whole bunch of choices, I’m a person that had to deal with that over and over again – young. Always had to make a choice. I know who I am, I know how to make decisions.  I believe in my gut now.

A lot of things even being on a major label, everybody is going to have an opinion on everything.
  But I just trust my gut and go wit it and I do that comfortably.  The way I grew up, I been doing that. Actually making decisions, but its not been easy doing, because everybody got an opinion on something. What’s good, what’s bad, what’s wrong.
 I trust my gut and it might tell me something different and  when I do it a lot of people may go against me because everybody wants you to do what they want you to do. It’s MY life ,and I tell everybody that I wanna do something THIS way, they like “nah, I think you should do it this way- this way works”. And I do it THIS way, everybody’s looking at me like ‘what’s wrong with you?”
 So that happened to me my whole life you know? With the decision being on the label, everybody following suit , going with what the CEO saying, and I’ll be like “you know what? Naw, I don’t wanna do that, I don’t think that makes money” Like I always say: A broke nigga is always gonna tell you how to make a dollar”. They always want to tell you how to do something, but you look at their life – and their life ain’t nowhere! So I’m going to get it the way I know how. Going against the grain.

PART 2 COMING SOON