What made you want to get in shape?

I was like this before I became famous. I was all about health and wellness but you go through phases. I was going through some deep shit so I just let myself go and wanted to indulge and be a part of the community and America. So I started hanging out and doing what Americans do. I became a product of my environment. You guys wanna indulge? Let's fucking indulge. What else were we gonna do?

After a while it becomes—Okay, I see everyone in this space took that way out. Now let’s see if we can get it moving. Let’s see if we can do something besides just turning up and getting drunk and eating all this shit. If I showed up at first, and was like, "Hell yeah lets go workout! Let’s go do this!" It would be like "What the fuck? We can't relate to you."

No one wants to be the weird fitness rapper.

Yeah! There's nothing relatable to you. I'm just relatable to everybody. This is a part of my job now. I have to be on stage to entertain my fans for 45 minutes and it's like ya'll want me to be out of breath in 15 minutes?

What is your workout routine?

It's really just jumping up and down on stage. And eating foods that I know are not gonna make me tired while I'm on stage and after.

But when I'm not about to go on, I'll have whatever I want to eat. Hot wings, whatever. I'm always moving. I barely even rest anymore. My whole lifestyle is different. While everybody is still sleeping, I'm up. I can’t even tell anybody what it is, it’s something that you have to get accustomed to your body and figure out. Just put that time into yourself. That's all it takes.

But nobody wants to put in the time. They want Makonnen to give them a thing and it's like ‘oof yeah I got it.’ It's been eight months. Oh you see an Instagram picture now and think I did it overnight but no, it's been eight months of going through a different lifestyle.

Are Tuesdays permanently ruined for you?

It's both super random and powerful as fuck. You start seeing it all around the world and it's like what the fuck is going on? But then I come back to America and see it and it's like, "Whoa, this isn't what I meant." You guys have taken it and overdid it to where the person it was for, can't even go and enjoy a Tuesday. Everybody is so dressed up. It's such a big money night now. It's just like, "Fuck! I can't even pay to get in my own shit!" You know what I'm saying? [Laughs]

I felt it was one of those songs like “Hey Ya!” where everyone parties to it, but if you listen closely it’s really sad. You’re exhausted and overworked and don’t even have the energy to dance so you just order more drinks at the bar. Do you ever think back to that time when you wrote that song?

I was in the studio and Rae Sremmurd were there and we were just kicking it in a regular little house before people cared about any of us. We'd just be boom boom boom, creative and going.

I foresaw our power way early and [initially] wanted to keep it in-house with Mike Will and everybody. Everybody wants to stay together and be like the X-Men, this big superpower team. But you live in America and money is involved and everyone wants different things. We all have families to take care of, so we have to make the best choices for us. Then we end up around the world, backstage again, looking at each other and being like, "Damn what the fuck. Y'all killing it out there.” “Nah man, you killing it.”