Did you really come up with the “Shoot” dance in front of the mirror?

Yeah! On some "looking at yourself, just turnt in the house, everybody dancing." When I play my own music I just do anything. I was in the mirror looking at myself and I got to winding that motherfucker up and hitting that motherfucker, just like, “Oh, that shit hard!” I started hitting it in the video and it just popped.

How did it go from just a dance you were doing to a dance you were known for, and a challenge and all that?

I don't even know. I didn't think of it, I was just doin’ it in the video. And I saw it, and I said [to my videographer], “Aww, Ali, that motherfucker looks so good right there, keep this.” And then it just popped. I look on Instagram, and I just see people doing it. At first it was just local people that was fucking with it, then outta nowhere I start seeing football teams and shit like that in the locker room and it started expanding.

Have you always been a dancer?

Mmmhmm. I always danced. You gotta have a good time some way.

Even just talking about dancing makes you smile!

That's what I always tell people. It be confusing them. They're like, “This can't be BlocBoy, this can't be the same person.” But just 'cause you a gangster — you could shoot 1,000 people, it don't mean you can't have a good time. I have a good time everywhere I'm at. I'm not a gangster, I'm just a guy who knows how to have a good time and knows how to back himself up.

How did you meet Tay Keith?

We moved to Raleigh [a North Memphis neighborhood] when I was 14. Tay Keith lived just around the corner. I just so happened to walk down the street, and I see they [shed] open and they got studio equipment. I'm like, Oooh, they got studio equipment! I went in there and fucked around and got some beats from him. We was so young that everybody was friendly.

So then I had dropped a song called “Goons Coming.” It wasn't nothing but it was my first song. We started bonding after that. I got him to send a couple more beats. My bros and them at the time they was rapping at the house, too. So, me, I snuck in and took they mic and put it in my room and just rapped in the closet. I was just rapping out at the closet and then bam. Just recording myself constantly.

Is that how you learned to engineer?

Matter of fact, I looked at YouTube to see how do I make my music sound mastered. I looked at it and then since then I was working.

While you were working, his career started to go in one direction and you…

Yeah, his shit started going crazy before me. That shit really motivated me. He used to tell me like, "Mane, you hear this junt? I just dropped this junt with Blac Youngsta." I'm like, “Maan, you turning up, I gotta turn up like you, I gotta come hard with it.” We still close to this day, that's my brother. His whole family, they call me Bloc, I'm like a family member to all of them.

Do you remember how you made “Shoot”?

I was thinking about my song “Two” and my song “Yeah.” And I put ‘em together. Everybody would get turnt to the parts [where I’d go] “yeah!” and “two!,” so I put ‘em together and I made “Shoot” feel the same way. I was like, This song right here is too hard.

How I recorded it is I’d be on the bed, I'd press record, and then I’d run into the closet and I said, “Shoot! Shoot!” I said it four times and then my cousin came in and was like, “Bruh, that shit is not wassup, loco.” And I’m like, “Nigga, fuck you mean, nigga?!” And I put it on loop like three, four times and we got to dancing to it. And then he was like, “You got me, that shit’s hard!”



