Your previous Blue Chips projects were billed to both you and producer Party Supplies. This one is just you, right?

Well, Party Supplies had a lot to do with it. He’s on a lot of tracks, but he didn’t do it totally. I did it. I A&R’d it, for lack of a better word. I put everything together and then I enlisted my very good friend Harry Fraud to make everything just sound bigger. So it’s Blue Chips 7000 because It was a lot of just taking things off the internet and just rapping on it in the old Blue Chips, you know? It’s still that, but it sounds bigger. It just sounds better.

I heard an interview you did with Zane Lowe a few weeks back, and you said you were having sample issues with this record. Did you end up leaving one song off? Because you mentioned in that interview that there were 14 tracks, but there were 13 on the album I got.

It’s not that I left it off. It got denied. Out of 100 percent, 93 percent [of the samples on the album] got cleared, so I can’t really be too upset. But the one I that I did lose was heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. And there was no other way to salvage it because it’s a five-bar, or six-bar loop—it’s a weird tempo. There’s just no way to recreate it.

Who was sampled?

Roberto Carlos. I don’t know the name of the song, but he’s a Brazilian artist. I just hope one day we can just figure it out to be able to use that, man. They can have all the publishing, I don’t really give a flying fuck about that—it’s not like I’m going platinum with that. It’s a beautiful piece of art that I really want the world to hear.

Where did the name Blue Chips 7000 come from? There’s that old movie from the ’60s, Red Line 7000.

I’ve never heard of that. But Blue Chips is an old movie from the ’90s with Shaq, Penny, [and] Nick Nolte. They were all high school players and Nick Nolte was a college [coach]. I think he was playing Bobby Knight, or a Bobby Knight-type of character. So he was recruiting these dudes, and he would pretty much do anything to get the top player.

I feel I’m one of those players. So I feel like Nick Nolte had to buy my mother or my father a tractor or a farm, or come through with a big fucking bag of money, just to get me to come play on the team. That’s really what the thought process was. I’m a big sports fan. And the play of shaving points and fixing games and paying people off to come and play, it was just comical to me at the time. I just ran with it, and it became a thing. The “7000” is just because it’s beyond. It’s not part three, it’s part 7000.

In May of last year, you said the album was done. If I had heard Blue Chips 7000 back then, how different was it from what we’re hearing now?

Very different, but it would have been stupid heat. There are some songs that I left off because you can’t have them all on there, so I had to make tough decisions. But I could put a secondary album together right now that would be really good too.

You seemed really frustrated this May because the album wasn’t out, and you said something on stage about it.

Everyone blames the label. This one ain’t about them. Labels suck, period. They are what they are. Unless they can help you, they suck. Unless you’re a humongous artist and you’re doing pop songs and hit songs, it really sucks. But for me, all I care about is putting out the project the way I made it. And it’s always about sample clearance. That’s the only thing with this shit, man. That’s what slows everything down, is trying to track people down, or actually listening to these people bullshit about samples. I don’t have any contact with the sample person. I’m relying on these people to tell me the truth and not be fucking assholes. So you really just never know.

When you said, “Maybe I’ll just leak my own album,” what kind of pushback did you get?

Everyone called me right away and everything started moving. Motherfuckers started moving their ass. It’s really crazy. Sometimes you gotta do things like that. That wasn’t the reaction I was looking for. I want people just to do things to do them. I have to say something stupid on Twitter, and then I get phone calls like, “That really hurt me.” Yeah, go fuck yourself, it hurt you. Go make something happen. Why would that hurt you? Come on, dog. Get it together. What are you signing me up for? Let me go if you’re not going to fucking do the right thing by me. What's the point?