Image via Robb Bank$/Instagram
The Bay Area doesn’t sleep, and neither does Yousef Srour.
“Hi, its me. Robb. Just want to fill you guys in a little bit….Tragedy struck. I sent my laptop to apple to be serviced because i watch a lot of bootleg… and it came back everything erased. i think i might be happy pt 2 gone. this was bad. On top of that I had to have a surgery which put me out for a minute. I wasnt in a good mood and I decided to fire my entire team and remake the whole project. So all within a week I produced, engineered, mixed and mastered i think i might be happy pt 2. I even shot my own dam videos”
– Robb Bank$, “Do The Most,” May 3, 2024
It’s ironic that a project named i think i might be happy pt 2 accidentally got wiped off the face of the earth. When Bank$ and I spoke on February 24th, the release date for i think i might be happy, pt. 1’s release was less than two days away. i think i might be happy, pt. 2 had already been recorded, with eight extra songs tucked away on his laptop’s internal hard drive. Then the worst possible thing occurred.
It’s currently September. The original version of i think i might be happy, pt. 2 is long gone, a new version of the mixtape has been released, and Robb Bank$ is already teasing his next project, Tha Leak Vol. 3.
Robb Bank$ doesn’t quit in the face of adversity. The son of Shaggy, the Jamaican-American mastermind behind “Boombastic” and “It Wasn’t Me,” Richard O’Neil Burrell knew he wanted to be a rapper by the age of six. By 17, he dropped his debut mixtape, Calendars. A decade later, he released, FALCONIA, a not-quite magnum opus five years in the making. His impressive discography exhibits how easily his baritone boom can cut through even the hardest 808s, but nonetheless, his career never really took off like many of his peers.
In Broward County, being a nepo baby means nothing. Robb Bank$ was an outcast, banished to Tumblr in the early stages of his career. It wasn’t until he met SpaceGhostPurrp and became affiliated with RaiderKlan that his career experienced its first wave of success. In line with the two Libra scales tattooed into his eyelids, he’s constantly shifting and perhaps at times been too malleable. He almost signed to Rich Gang, yet the only collective he ever joined was Members Only, and even that quickly disbanded after XXXTentacion’s untimely death. He’s spent the majority of his life adjacent to star power and business moguls, but Robb Bank$ remains a lone wolf. He’s not antisocial per se, however most introverts can probably relate to the title of his 2022 mixtape: I Dnt txt back, I Dnt call.
Robb Bank$ life is insular; it is built around his immediate family and a spare number of close friends. He’s not the same person he was at 16. Peace of mind is far more appealing than a fresh pint of Actevis. At 29, Robb Bank$ creates art for art’s sake, and now, his music reflects the scribblings of a genre-bending chameleon committed to weaving together trap, sample drill, R&B, dancehall, dub, and Miami bass.
i think i might be happy is a manifestation, a mixtape series, a producer tag, and a paradox. If i think i might be happy, am I truly happy? The six word statement may have inaugurated his first mixtape, but for the first time in his life, Robb Bank$ truly knows that he’s found happiness. For now.
What was it like growing up in Broward County?
Robb Bank$: I would say like anywhere else. It’s an aggressive area. Growing up as a kid, it forces you to be a little aggressive, a little standoffish. But I love it. I loved growing up in Broward because I feel like it made me grow up quick.
Was there a moment where you realized you wanted to rap?
Robb Bank$: I knew I wanted to rap when I was young, I was like six. I used to watch 106 & Park and I used to want to emulate them. I was really drawn to it, it was one of those things that I was really drawn to. And I wasn’t drawn to a lot as a child. I was never really easily influenced by shit. But that did. Definitely Rap City and 106 & Park. Like I also said, when I first heard certain rappers. When I first heard Biggie, I knew I wanted to rap. When I first heard Slick Rick, I knew I wanted to rap. Wu-Tang, I knew I wanted to rap when I first heard “Protect Ya Neck” and shit like that.
The first time I made something, I was real real young. I think I was recording at one of my best friends at the time’s house, Young Neal, and his brother had a whole bunch of recording equipment and we would just go fuck around with his shit. His brother taught us how to count bars; he taught us everything about music, to be real. All the basic fundamentals: how to count bars, how to do a hook, how to do a verse. That was the first time I made something. I was in like the eighth grade, something like that.
What did that song sound like?
Robb Bank$: That shit was ass! That shit was ass looking back. We was just trying – I don’t even know what the fuck that shit sound like. I couldn’t tell you what it sounds like. There’s been so much music since then, my mind don’t even remember that shit.
I definitely remember burning CDs and handing them out to people in school and they for sure roasted them, “That shit’s ass!” I never told nobody because you have to understand that back then, it wasn’t cool that you wanted to do music, that you wanted to be a rapper. There wasn’t no dreams back then. Everybody’s got that shit now. With just how the world is, everybody wants to be something big. That’s cool and I fuck with that, but when I was growing up, it wasn’t like that. It was like, “Boy, you aren’t gonna be shit! What? You finna graduate or you finna drop-out?” Being a rapper was like a joke, almost.
What was your relationship like with SpaceGhostPurrp?
Robb Bank$: Purrp was older than me, but it wasn’t really a big bro sort of situation. That was just my dawg. Honestly, he had got lit before me and I was watching shit and he made me feel like, “Damn, you really from the crib….” That’s that shit that had me like “hell ya” because at the time, ain’t nobody in Florida. There was no Florida music scene. It did not exist at the time. Nothing existed here, and Purrp was the first one, the first one out of Davie. I came directly after that out of Broward, I was the first one out of Broward except – there’s always someone rapping in every city, but in Broward it was more so like Choo Choo and the [Stro] Corleones and all them boys, but they wasn’t on the Internet. They were more the hood scene, the super hood shit like trends like the Polish Club, all that super hood shit, open mic nights and stuff like that, and they were buzzin’ in the city.
I came out of Broward straight to the Internet and started buzzing out the Internet. I used to have to correct n****s on interviews. I remember on XXL and shit like that, they would say, “Are you from Miami?” and I would be like, “No, I’m from Broward.” It was that early. No one knew what Broward was. No one knew what the fuck a Fort Lauderdale or a Pompano was.
Purrp was the first one and our relationship was more so actual friends. He was really my dawg, but I wouldn’t see him much. I would see him once every two months, where I would pull up on him if I needed beats. That’s the only way Purrp would really give you beats; you need to go to his crib and really go through his laptop like, “C’mon, pull up your laptop for me. Come on, bruh.” Purrp ain’t sending you shit. That is not happening at all. He might have sent me only two beats in life. Every other beat I got from him was right there in real life. He either made it right there or it was on his computer and he gave it to you.
Everybody feels like Purrp crazy, and rightfully so. He does some of that shit sometimes, but man, Purrp has been the same. He been the same n****. He ain’t never changed when it came to that. He can just document shit a little better now because cameras and all that shit.
Can you tell me about your relationship with Tumblr and MySpace?
Robb Bank$: Tumblr is the reason…. I was talking to my creative director about it the other day and I don’t know what it was, it’s like a thing where people just choose you sometimes. People will just champion you and you don’t know why, but they will and they just choose you to be, “You know what, we fuckin’ wit you.” You take it in stride or shy away from it, and I took it in stride. I said, “Okay,” and I put that jacket on.
I never had no MySpace. There was a MySpace for the first lil rap group I was in, but I never ran the page; I was never on that shit. My first social media ever was Tumblr. I never had AIM, I never had Facebook, I never had none of that shit because that’s how I am naturally. That’s the type of person I am. I don’t really fuck with social media, I don’t like it. Tumblr was the safe alternative to me because it was all the little artsy shit, all the shit that I like – movies and shit like that – so I gravitated towards that in high school. No one else was on it either. Nobody from Broward was on that motherfucker, I could really be myself for real and post little crazy shit and little weird shit that I like. You post that shit on Facebook or something that and everybody from Broward follow you, n****s gonna be like, “This n**** weird as a motherfucker.” Tumblr was my little escape and it went from an escape to showing the world who I am. I’ll always love it; I’ll always have love for it. I really want it to make a whole resurgence and come back.
How did you go from rapping in the insular community of Broward County and knowing Purrp to meeting all the other cats who were rapping out of Florida?
Robb Bank$: Just by being in that scene. I was going to a lot of parties. I would go to a Purrp show, and once he started getting bigger, the rest of the Florida members of Raider Klan would pull up and that’s how I met people. I met [Denzel] Curry and them. I met Curry at this little store they had down here, where there were parties every night at the store; it was a store by daytime, party by night time type shit. They’d throw parties there, bitches would pull up, people pull up, that shit was in the middle of Carol City and we were the only n****s from Broward. We would go out there, I’d come two-deep, three-deep, my little people, and that’s how I met everybody. I ain’t meet Xavier Wulf and the other Raider Klan members from out of town, they would fly in. They flew in three or four times or something like that. I remember one time I took them out to the club, linked with them in the studio, shit like that. Just real organic.
Just friends of friends and then you naturally vibe with them and they become your friend.
Robb Bank$: But I never got too close with anybody from Raider Klan though, if I’m being completely honest. I never got too close with anybody there except Purrp. Me and Purrp, that was my dawg. You have to understand that I was never really in Raider Klan; I met all of them through Purrp, so it’s really just, “you are a friend of my friend.”
I think that’s really interesting because you never signed with Rich Gang, for example, but you’ve been affiliated with a lot of big groups.
Robb Bank$: That’s the beauty of being able to do what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m able to bridge little weird gaps. I got to go to the studio with Boldy James and Mikey Rocks and call Zelooperz and tell him to pull up. I could do that. I could go to the studio – pick any random rapper from Atlanta and I could tell ‘em, “Aye, go link with Curry or Trippie Redd, or one of them.” I’m able to be the connector, in a sense, of a lot of the dots behind the scenes. I like that I come with that, to be honest with you. I can tell Stunna, “Aye, go look at this or look at that.” I feel like that’s needed. That’s needed without malicious intent because there are people like that already, but they got their own agendas behind shit whereas I don’t because there’s nothing I can gain from any of it to be real with you. What am I going to gain, a feature? I don’t really want it to be honest with you. I don’t even want to do the song, for real.
Do you think it’s one of those side effects of being who you are? You’re friendly so you’re able to get into all these spaces.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I think so. The funny thing is, I don’t even know how it happens. Truthfully, I’m not friendly at all. I’m one of the most, play the back role type of people that you’ll ever meet. It’s more so people come to me. People come to you and will give you your roses in a sense, like “Oh bro, I fuck with you from this, this, and that,” and I’m the type of n**** that fuck with you if you fuck with me. Anybody that you’ve seen me with, they fuck with me and that’s why I’m fucking with them.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
Was there a moment where you realized you wanted to rap?
Robb Bank$: I knew I wanted to rap when I was young, I was like six. I used to watch 106 & Park and I used to want to emulate them. I was really drawn to it, it was one of those things that I was really drawn to. And I wasn’t drawn to a lot as a child. I was never really easily influenced by shit. But that did. Definitely Rap City and 106 & Park. Like I also said, when I first heard certain rappers. When I first heard Biggie, I knew I wanted to rap. When I first heard Slick Rick, I knew I wanted to rap. Wu-Tang, I knew I wanted to rap when I first heard “Protect Ya Neck” and shit like that.
The first time I made something, I was real real young. I think I was recording at one of my best friends at the time’s house, Young Neal, and his brother had a whole bunch of recording equipment and we would just go fuck around with his shit. His brother taught us how to count bars; he taught us everything about music, to be real. All the basic fundamentals: how to count bars, how to do a hook, how to do a verse. That was the first time I made something. I was in like the eighth grade, something like that.
What did that song sound like?
Robb Bank$: That shit was ass! That shit was ass looking back. We was just trying – I don’t even know what the fuck that shit sound like. I couldn’t tell you what it sounds like. There’s been so much music since then, my mind don’t even remember that shit.
I definitely remember burning CDs and handing them out to people in school and they for sure roasted them, “That shit’s ass!” I never told nobody because you have to understand that back then, it wasn’t cool that you wanted to do music, that you wanted to be a rapper. There wasn’t no dreams back then. Everybody’s got that shit now. With just how the world is, everybody wants to be something big. That’s cool and I fuck with that, but when I was growing up, it wasn’t like that. It was like, “Boy, you aren’t gonna be shit! What? You finna graduate or you finna drop-out?” Being a rapper was like a joke, almost.
What was your relationship like with SpaceGhostPurrp?
Robb Bank$: Purrp was older than me, but it wasn’t really a big bro sort of situation. That was just my dawg. Honestly, he had got lit before me and I was watching shit and he made me feel like, “Damn, you really from the crib….” That’s that shit that had me like “hell ya” because at the time, ain’t nobody in Florida. There was no Florida music scene. It did not exist at the time. Nothing existed here, and Purrp was the first one, the first one out of Davie. I came directly after that out of Broward, I was the first one out of Broward except – there’s always someone rapping in every city, but in Broward it was more so like Choo Choo and the [Stro] Corleones and all them boys, but they wasn’t on the Internet. They were more the hood scene, the super hood shit like trends like the Polish Club, all that super hood shit, open mic nights and stuff like that, and they were buzzin’ in the city.
I came out of Broward straight to the Internet and started buzzing out the Internet. I used to have to correct n****s on interviews. I remember on XXL and shit like that, they would say, “Are you from Miami?” and I would be like, “No, I’m from Broward.” It was that early. No one knew what Broward was. No one knew what the fuck a Fort Lauderdale or a Pompano was.
Purrp was the first one and our relationship was more so actual friends. He was really my dawg, but I wouldn’t see him much. I would see him once every two months, where I would pull up on him if I needed beats. That’s the only way Purrp would really give you beats; you need to go to his crib and really go through his laptop like, “C’mon, pull up your laptop for me. Come on, bruh.” Purrp ain’t sending you shit. That is not happening at all. He might have sent me only two beats in life. Every other beat I got from him was right there in real life. He either made it right there or it was on his computer and he gave it to you.
Everybody feels like Purrp crazy, and rightfully so. He does some of that shit sometimes, but man, Purrp has been the same. He been the same n****. He ain’t never changed when it came to that. He can just document shit a little better now because cameras and all that shit.
Can you tell me about your relationship with Tumblr and MySpace?
Robb Bank$: Tumblr is the reason…. I was talking to my creative director about it the other day and I don’t know what it was, it’s like a thing where people just choose you sometimes. People will just champion you and you don’t know why, but they will and they just choose you to be, “You know what, we fuckin’ wit you.” You take it in stride or shy away from it, and I took it in stride. I said, “Okay,” and I put that jacket on.
I never had no MySpace. There was a MySpace for the first lil rap group I was in, but I never ran the page; I was never on that shit. My first social media ever was Tumblr. I never had AIM, I never had Facebook, I never had none of that shit because that’s how I am naturally. That’s the type of person I am. I don’t really fuck with social media, I don’t like it. Tumblr was the safe alternative to me because it was all the little artsy shit, all the shit that I like – movies and shit like that – so I gravitated towards that in high school. No one else was on it either. Nobody from Broward was on that motherfucker, I could really be myself for real and post little crazy shit and little weird shit that I like. You post that shit on Facebook or something that and everybody from Broward follow you, n****s gonna be like, “This n**** weird as a motherfucker.” Tumblr was my little escape and it went from an escape to showing the world who I am. I’ll always love it; I’ll always have love for it. I really want it to make a whole resurgence and come back.
How did you go from rapping in the insular community of Broward County and knowing Purrp to meeting all the other cats who were rapping out of Florida?
Robb Bank$: Just by being in that scene. I was going to a lot of parties. I would go to a Purrp show, and once he started getting bigger, the rest of the Florida members of Raider Klan would pull up and that’s how I met people. I met [Denzel] Curry and them. I met Curry at this little store they had down here, where there were parties every night at the store; it was a store by daytime, party by night time type shit. They’d throw parties there, bitches would pull up, people pull up, that shit was in the middle of Carol City and we were the only n****s from Broward. We would go out there, I’d come two-deep, three-deep, my little people, and that’s how I met everybody. I ain’t meet Xavier Wulf and the other Raider Klan members from out of town, they would fly in. They flew in three or four times or something like that. I remember one time I took them out to the club, linked with them in the studio, shit like that. Just real organic.
Just friends of friends and then you naturally vibe with them and they become your friend.
Robb Bank$: But I never got too close with anybody from Raider Klan though, if I’m being completely honest. I never got too close with anybody there except Purrp. Me and Purrp, that was my dawg. You have to understand that I was never really in Raider Klan; I met all of them through Purrp, so it’s really just, “you are a friend of my friend.”
I think that’s really interesting because you never signed with Rich Gang, for example, but you’ve been affiliated with a lot of big groups.
Robb Bank$: That’s the beauty of being able to do what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m able to bridge little weird gaps. I got to go to the studio with Boldy James and Mikey Rocks and call Zelooperz and tell him to pull up. I could do that. I could go to the studio – pick any random rapper from Atlanta and I could tell ‘em, “Aye, go link with Curry or Trippie Redd, or one of them.” I’m able to be the connector, in a sense, of a lot of the dots behind the scenes. I like that I come with that, to be honest with you. I can tell Stunna, “Aye, go look at this or look at that.” I feel like that’s needed. That’s needed without malicious intent because there are people like that already, but they got their own agendas behind shit whereas I don’t because there’s nothing I can gain from any of it to be real with you. What am I going to gain, a feature? I don’t really want it to be honest with you. I don’t even want to do the song, for real.
Do you think it’s one of those side effects of being who you are? You’re friendly so you’re able to get into all these spaces.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I think so. The funny thing is, I don’t even know how it happens. Truthfully, I’m not friendly at all. I’m one of the most, play the back role type of people that you’ll ever meet. It’s more so people come to me. People come to you and will give you your roses in a sense, like “Oh bro, I fuck with you from this, this, and that,” and I’m the type of n**** that fuck with you if you fuck with me. Anybody that you’ve seen me with, they fuck with me and that’s why I’m fucking with them.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
The first time I made something, I was real real young. I think I was recording at one of my best friends at the time’s house, Young Neal, and his brother had a whole bunch of recording equipment and we would just go fuck around with his shit. His brother taught us how to count bars; he taught us everything about music, to be real. All the basic fundamentals: how to count bars, how to do a hook, how to do a verse. That was the first time I made something. I was in like the eighth grade, something like that.
What did that song sound like?
Robb Bank$: That shit was ass! That shit was ass looking back. We was just trying – I don’t even know what the fuck that shit sound like. I couldn’t tell you what it sounds like. There’s been so much music since then, my mind don’t even remember that shit.
I definitely remember burning CDs and handing them out to people in school and they for sure roasted them, “That shit’s ass!” I never told nobody because you have to understand that back then, it wasn’t cool that you wanted to do music, that you wanted to be a rapper. There wasn’t no dreams back then. Everybody’s got that shit now. With just how the world is, everybody wants to be something big. That’s cool and I fuck with that, but when I was growing up, it wasn’t like that. It was like, “Boy, you aren’t gonna be shit! What? You finna graduate or you finna drop-out?” Being a rapper was like a joke, almost.
What was your relationship like with SpaceGhostPurrp?
Robb Bank$: Purrp was older than me, but it wasn’t really a big bro sort of situation. That was just my dawg. Honestly, he had got lit before me and I was watching shit and he made me feel like, “Damn, you really from the crib….” That’s that shit that had me like “hell ya” because at the time, ain’t nobody in Florida. There was no Florida music scene. It did not exist at the time. Nothing existed here, and Purrp was the first one, the first one out of Davie. I came directly after that out of Broward, I was the first one out of Broward except – there’s always someone rapping in every city, but in Broward it was more so like Choo Choo and the [Stro] Corleones and all them boys, but they wasn’t on the Internet. They were more the hood scene, the super hood shit like trends like the Polish Club, all that super hood shit, open mic nights and stuff like that, and they were buzzin’ in the city.
I came out of Broward straight to the Internet and started buzzing out the Internet. I used to have to correct n****s on interviews. I remember on XXL and shit like that, they would say, “Are you from Miami?” and I would be like, “No, I’m from Broward.” It was that early. No one knew what Broward was. No one knew what the fuck a Fort Lauderdale or a Pompano was.
Purrp was the first one and our relationship was more so actual friends. He was really my dawg, but I wouldn’t see him much. I would see him once every two months, where I would pull up on him if I needed beats. That’s the only way Purrp would really give you beats; you need to go to his crib and really go through his laptop like, “C’mon, pull up your laptop for me. Come on, bruh.” Purrp ain’t sending you shit. That is not happening at all. He might have sent me only two beats in life. Every other beat I got from him was right there in real life. He either made it right there or it was on his computer and he gave it to you.
Everybody feels like Purrp crazy, and rightfully so. He does some of that shit sometimes, but man, Purrp has been the same. He been the same n****. He ain’t never changed when it came to that. He can just document shit a little better now because cameras and all that shit.
Can you tell me about your relationship with Tumblr and MySpace?
Robb Bank$: Tumblr is the reason…. I was talking to my creative director about it the other day and I don’t know what it was, it’s like a thing where people just choose you sometimes. People will just champion you and you don’t know why, but they will and they just choose you to be, “You know what, we fuckin’ wit you.” You take it in stride or shy away from it, and I took it in stride. I said, “Okay,” and I put that jacket on.
I never had no MySpace. There was a MySpace for the first lil rap group I was in, but I never ran the page; I was never on that shit. My first social media ever was Tumblr. I never had AIM, I never had Facebook, I never had none of that shit because that’s how I am naturally. That’s the type of person I am. I don’t really fuck with social media, I don’t like it. Tumblr was the safe alternative to me because it was all the little artsy shit, all the shit that I like – movies and shit like that – so I gravitated towards that in high school. No one else was on it either. Nobody from Broward was on that motherfucker, I could really be myself for real and post little crazy shit and little weird shit that I like. You post that shit on Facebook or something that and everybody from Broward follow you, n****s gonna be like, “This n**** weird as a motherfucker.” Tumblr was my little escape and it went from an escape to showing the world who I am. I’ll always love it; I’ll always have love for it. I really want it to make a whole resurgence and come back.
How did you go from rapping in the insular community of Broward County and knowing Purrp to meeting all the other cats who were rapping out of Florida?
Robb Bank$: Just by being in that scene. I was going to a lot of parties. I would go to a Purrp show, and once he started getting bigger, the rest of the Florida members of Raider Klan would pull up and that’s how I met people. I met [Denzel] Curry and them. I met Curry at this little store they had down here, where there were parties every night at the store; it was a store by daytime, party by night time type shit. They’d throw parties there, bitches would pull up, people pull up, that shit was in the middle of Carol City and we were the only n****s from Broward. We would go out there, I’d come two-deep, three-deep, my little people, and that’s how I met everybody. I ain’t meet Xavier Wulf and the other Raider Klan members from out of town, they would fly in. They flew in three or four times or something like that. I remember one time I took them out to the club, linked with them in the studio, shit like that. Just real organic.
Just friends of friends and then you naturally vibe with them and they become your friend.
Robb Bank$: But I never got too close with anybody from Raider Klan though, if I’m being completely honest. I never got too close with anybody there except Purrp. Me and Purrp, that was my dawg. You have to understand that I was never really in Raider Klan; I met all of them through Purrp, so it’s really just, “you are a friend of my friend.”
I think that’s really interesting because you never signed with Rich Gang, for example, but you’ve been affiliated with a lot of big groups.
Robb Bank$: That’s the beauty of being able to do what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m able to bridge little weird gaps. I got to go to the studio with Boldy James and Mikey Rocks and call Zelooperz and tell him to pull up. I could do that. I could go to the studio – pick any random rapper from Atlanta and I could tell ‘em, “Aye, go link with Curry or Trippie Redd, or one of them.” I’m able to be the connector, in a sense, of a lot of the dots behind the scenes. I like that I come with that, to be honest with you. I can tell Stunna, “Aye, go look at this or look at that.” I feel like that’s needed. That’s needed without malicious intent because there are people like that already, but they got their own agendas behind shit whereas I don’t because there’s nothing I can gain from any of it to be real with you. What am I going to gain, a feature? I don’t really want it to be honest with you. I don’t even want to do the song, for real.
Do you think it’s one of those side effects of being who you are? You’re friendly so you’re able to get into all these spaces.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I think so. The funny thing is, I don’t even know how it happens. Truthfully, I’m not friendly at all. I’m one of the most, play the back role type of people that you’ll ever meet. It’s more so people come to me. People come to you and will give you your roses in a sense, like “Oh bro, I fuck with you from this, this, and that,” and I’m the type of n**** that fuck with you if you fuck with me. Anybody that you’ve seen me with, they fuck with me and that’s why I’m fucking with them.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
I definitely remember burning CDs and handing them out to people in school and they for sure roasted them, “That shit’s ass!” I never told nobody because you have to understand that back then, it wasn’t cool that you wanted to do music, that you wanted to be a rapper. There wasn’t no dreams back then. Everybody’s got that shit now. With just how the world is, everybody wants to be something big. That’s cool and I fuck with that, but when I was growing up, it wasn’t like that. It was like, “Boy, you aren’t gonna be shit! What? You finna graduate or you finna drop-out?” Being a rapper was like a joke, almost.
What was your relationship like with SpaceGhostPurrp?
Robb Bank$: Purrp was older than me, but it wasn’t really a big bro sort of situation. That was just my dawg. Honestly, he had got lit before me and I was watching shit and he made me feel like, “Damn, you really from the crib….” That’s that shit that had me like “hell ya” because at the time, ain’t nobody in Florida. There was no Florida music scene. It did not exist at the time. Nothing existed here, and Purrp was the first one, the first one out of Davie. I came directly after that out of Broward, I was the first one out of Broward except – there’s always someone rapping in every city, but in Broward it was more so like Choo Choo and the [Stro] Corleones and all them boys, but they wasn’t on the Internet. They were more the hood scene, the super hood shit like trends like the Polish Club, all that super hood shit, open mic nights and stuff like that, and they were buzzin’ in the city.
I came out of Broward straight to the Internet and started buzzing out the Internet. I used to have to correct n****s on interviews. I remember on XXL and shit like that, they would say, “Are you from Miami?” and I would be like, “No, I’m from Broward.” It was that early. No one knew what Broward was. No one knew what the fuck a Fort Lauderdale or a Pompano was.
Purrp was the first one and our relationship was more so actual friends. He was really my dawg, but I wouldn’t see him much. I would see him once every two months, where I would pull up on him if I needed beats. That’s the only way Purrp would really give you beats; you need to go to his crib and really go through his laptop like, “C’mon, pull up your laptop for me. Come on, bruh.” Purrp ain’t sending you shit. That is not happening at all. He might have sent me only two beats in life. Every other beat I got from him was right there in real life. He either made it right there or it was on his computer and he gave it to you.
Everybody feels like Purrp crazy, and rightfully so. He does some of that shit sometimes, but man, Purrp has been the same. He been the same n****. He ain’t never changed when it came to that. He can just document shit a little better now because cameras and all that shit.
Can you tell me about your relationship with Tumblr and MySpace?
Robb Bank$: Tumblr is the reason…. I was talking to my creative director about it the other day and I don’t know what it was, it’s like a thing where people just choose you sometimes. People will just champion you and you don’t know why, but they will and they just choose you to be, “You know what, we fuckin’ wit you.” You take it in stride or shy away from it, and I took it in stride. I said, “Okay,” and I put that jacket on.
I never had no MySpace. There was a MySpace for the first lil rap group I was in, but I never ran the page; I was never on that shit. My first social media ever was Tumblr. I never had AIM, I never had Facebook, I never had none of that shit because that’s how I am naturally. That’s the type of person I am. I don’t really fuck with social media, I don’t like it. Tumblr was the safe alternative to me because it was all the little artsy shit, all the shit that I like – movies and shit like that – so I gravitated towards that in high school. No one else was on it either. Nobody from Broward was on that motherfucker, I could really be myself for real and post little crazy shit and little weird shit that I like. You post that shit on Facebook or something that and everybody from Broward follow you, n****s gonna be like, “This n**** weird as a motherfucker.” Tumblr was my little escape and it went from an escape to showing the world who I am. I’ll always love it; I’ll always have love for it. I really want it to make a whole resurgence and come back.
How did you go from rapping in the insular community of Broward County and knowing Purrp to meeting all the other cats who were rapping out of Florida?
Robb Bank$: Just by being in that scene. I was going to a lot of parties. I would go to a Purrp show, and once he started getting bigger, the rest of the Florida members of Raider Klan would pull up and that’s how I met people. I met [Denzel] Curry and them. I met Curry at this little store they had down here, where there were parties every night at the store; it was a store by daytime, party by night time type shit. They’d throw parties there, bitches would pull up, people pull up, that shit was in the middle of Carol City and we were the only n****s from Broward. We would go out there, I’d come two-deep, three-deep, my little people, and that’s how I met everybody. I ain’t meet Xavier Wulf and the other Raider Klan members from out of town, they would fly in. They flew in three or four times or something like that. I remember one time I took them out to the club, linked with them in the studio, shit like that. Just real organic.
Just friends of friends and then you naturally vibe with them and they become your friend.
Robb Bank$: But I never got too close with anybody from Raider Klan though, if I’m being completely honest. I never got too close with anybody there except Purrp. Me and Purrp, that was my dawg. You have to understand that I was never really in Raider Klan; I met all of them through Purrp, so it’s really just, “you are a friend of my friend.”
I think that’s really interesting because you never signed with Rich Gang, for example, but you’ve been affiliated with a lot of big groups.
Robb Bank$: That’s the beauty of being able to do what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m able to bridge little weird gaps. I got to go to the studio with Boldy James and Mikey Rocks and call Zelooperz and tell him to pull up. I could do that. I could go to the studio – pick any random rapper from Atlanta and I could tell ‘em, “Aye, go link with Curry or Trippie Redd, or one of them.” I’m able to be the connector, in a sense, of a lot of the dots behind the scenes. I like that I come with that, to be honest with you. I can tell Stunna, “Aye, go look at this or look at that.” I feel like that’s needed. That’s needed without malicious intent because there are people like that already, but they got their own agendas behind shit whereas I don’t because there’s nothing I can gain from any of it to be real with you. What am I going to gain, a feature? I don’t really want it to be honest with you. I don’t even want to do the song, for real.
Do you think it’s one of those side effects of being who you are? You’re friendly so you’re able to get into all these spaces.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I think so. The funny thing is, I don’t even know how it happens. Truthfully, I’m not friendly at all. I’m one of the most, play the back role type of people that you’ll ever meet. It’s more so people come to me. People come to you and will give you your roses in a sense, like “Oh bro, I fuck with you from this, this, and that,” and I’m the type of n**** that fuck with you if you fuck with me. Anybody that you’ve seen me with, they fuck with me and that’s why I’m fucking with them.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
I came out of Broward straight to the Internet and started buzzing out the Internet. I used to have to correct n****s on interviews. I remember on XXL and shit like that, they would say, “Are you from Miami?” and I would be like, “No, I’m from Broward.” It was that early. No one knew what Broward was. No one knew what the fuck a Fort Lauderdale or a Pompano was.
Purrp was the first one and our relationship was more so actual friends. He was really my dawg, but I wouldn’t see him much. I would see him once every two months, where I would pull up on him if I needed beats. That’s the only way Purrp would really give you beats; you need to go to his crib and really go through his laptop like, “C’mon, pull up your laptop for me. Come on, bruh.” Purrp ain’t sending you shit. That is not happening at all. He might have sent me only two beats in life. Every other beat I got from him was right there in real life. He either made it right there or it was on his computer and he gave it to you.
Everybody feels like Purrp crazy, and rightfully so. He does some of that shit sometimes, but man, Purrp has been the same. He been the same n****. He ain’t never changed when it came to that. He can just document shit a little better now because cameras and all that shit.
Can you tell me about your relationship with Tumblr and MySpace?
Robb Bank$: Tumblr is the reason…. I was talking to my creative director about it the other day and I don’t know what it was, it’s like a thing where people just choose you sometimes. People will just champion you and you don’t know why, but they will and they just choose you to be, “You know what, we fuckin’ wit you.” You take it in stride or shy away from it, and I took it in stride. I said, “Okay,” and I put that jacket on.
I never had no MySpace. There was a MySpace for the first lil rap group I was in, but I never ran the page; I was never on that shit. My first social media ever was Tumblr. I never had AIM, I never had Facebook, I never had none of that shit because that’s how I am naturally. That’s the type of person I am. I don’t really fuck with social media, I don’t like it. Tumblr was the safe alternative to me because it was all the little artsy shit, all the shit that I like – movies and shit like that – so I gravitated towards that in high school. No one else was on it either. Nobody from Broward was on that motherfucker, I could really be myself for real and post little crazy shit and little weird shit that I like. You post that shit on Facebook or something that and everybody from Broward follow you, n****s gonna be like, “This n**** weird as a motherfucker.” Tumblr was my little escape and it went from an escape to showing the world who I am. I’ll always love it; I’ll always have love for it. I really want it to make a whole resurgence and come back.
How did you go from rapping in the insular community of Broward County and knowing Purrp to meeting all the other cats who were rapping out of Florida?
Robb Bank$: Just by being in that scene. I was going to a lot of parties. I would go to a Purrp show, and once he started getting bigger, the rest of the Florida members of Raider Klan would pull up and that’s how I met people. I met [Denzel] Curry and them. I met Curry at this little store they had down here, where there were parties every night at the store; it was a store by daytime, party by night time type shit. They’d throw parties there, bitches would pull up, people pull up, that shit was in the middle of Carol City and we were the only n****s from Broward. We would go out there, I’d come two-deep, three-deep, my little people, and that’s how I met everybody. I ain’t meet Xavier Wulf and the other Raider Klan members from out of town, they would fly in. They flew in three or four times or something like that. I remember one time I took them out to the club, linked with them in the studio, shit like that. Just real organic.
Just friends of friends and then you naturally vibe with them and they become your friend.
Robb Bank$: But I never got too close with anybody from Raider Klan though, if I’m being completely honest. I never got too close with anybody there except Purrp. Me and Purrp, that was my dawg. You have to understand that I was never really in Raider Klan; I met all of them through Purrp, so it’s really just, “you are a friend of my friend.”
I think that’s really interesting because you never signed with Rich Gang, for example, but you’ve been affiliated with a lot of big groups.
Robb Bank$: That’s the beauty of being able to do what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m able to bridge little weird gaps. I got to go to the studio with Boldy James and Mikey Rocks and call Zelooperz and tell him to pull up. I could do that. I could go to the studio – pick any random rapper from Atlanta and I could tell ‘em, “Aye, go link with Curry or Trippie Redd, or one of them.” I’m able to be the connector, in a sense, of a lot of the dots behind the scenes. I like that I come with that, to be honest with you. I can tell Stunna, “Aye, go look at this or look at that.” I feel like that’s needed. That’s needed without malicious intent because there are people like that already, but they got their own agendas behind shit whereas I don’t because there’s nothing I can gain from any of it to be real with you. What am I going to gain, a feature? I don’t really want it to be honest with you. I don’t even want to do the song, for real.
Do you think it’s one of those side effects of being who you are? You’re friendly so you’re able to get into all these spaces.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I think so. The funny thing is, I don’t even know how it happens. Truthfully, I’m not friendly at all. I’m one of the most, play the back role type of people that you’ll ever meet. It’s more so people come to me. People come to you and will give you your roses in a sense, like “Oh bro, I fuck with you from this, this, and that,” and I’m the type of n**** that fuck with you if you fuck with me. Anybody that you’ve seen me with, they fuck with me and that’s why I’m fucking with them.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
I never had no MySpace. There was a MySpace for the first lil rap group I was in, but I never ran the page; I was never on that shit. My first social media ever was Tumblr. I never had AIM, I never had Facebook, I never had none of that shit because that’s how I am naturally. That’s the type of person I am. I don’t really fuck with social media, I don’t like it. Tumblr was the safe alternative to me because it was all the little artsy shit, all the shit that I like – movies and shit like that – so I gravitated towards that in high school. No one else was on it either. Nobody from Broward was on that motherfucker, I could really be myself for real and post little crazy shit and little weird shit that I like. You post that shit on Facebook or something that and everybody from Broward follow you, n****s gonna be like, “This n**** weird as a motherfucker.” Tumblr was my little escape and it went from an escape to showing the world who I am. I’ll always love it; I’ll always have love for it. I really want it to make a whole resurgence and come back.
How did you go from rapping in the insular community of Broward County and knowing Purrp to meeting all the other cats who were rapping out of Florida?
Robb Bank$: Just by being in that scene. I was going to a lot of parties. I would go to a Purrp show, and once he started getting bigger, the rest of the Florida members of Raider Klan would pull up and that’s how I met people. I met [Denzel] Curry and them. I met Curry at this little store they had down here, where there were parties every night at the store; it was a store by daytime, party by night time type shit. They’d throw parties there, bitches would pull up, people pull up, that shit was in the middle of Carol City and we were the only n****s from Broward. We would go out there, I’d come two-deep, three-deep, my little people, and that’s how I met everybody. I ain’t meet Xavier Wulf and the other Raider Klan members from out of town, they would fly in. They flew in three or four times or something like that. I remember one time I took them out to the club, linked with them in the studio, shit like that. Just real organic.
Just friends of friends and then you naturally vibe with them and they become your friend.
Robb Bank$: But I never got too close with anybody from Raider Klan though, if I’m being completely honest. I never got too close with anybody there except Purrp. Me and Purrp, that was my dawg. You have to understand that I was never really in Raider Klan; I met all of them through Purrp, so it’s really just, “you are a friend of my friend.”
I think that’s really interesting because you never signed with Rich Gang, for example, but you’ve been affiliated with a lot of big groups.
Robb Bank$: That’s the beauty of being able to do what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m able to bridge little weird gaps. I got to go to the studio with Boldy James and Mikey Rocks and call Zelooperz and tell him to pull up. I could do that. I could go to the studio – pick any random rapper from Atlanta and I could tell ‘em, “Aye, go link with Curry or Trippie Redd, or one of them.” I’m able to be the connector, in a sense, of a lot of the dots behind the scenes. I like that I come with that, to be honest with you. I can tell Stunna, “Aye, go look at this or look at that.” I feel like that’s needed. That’s needed without malicious intent because there are people like that already, but they got their own agendas behind shit whereas I don’t because there’s nothing I can gain from any of it to be real with you. What am I going to gain, a feature? I don’t really want it to be honest with you. I don’t even want to do the song, for real.
Do you think it’s one of those side effects of being who you are? You’re friendly so you’re able to get into all these spaces.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I think so. The funny thing is, I don’t even know how it happens. Truthfully, I’m not friendly at all. I’m one of the most, play the back role type of people that you’ll ever meet. It’s more so people come to me. People come to you and will give you your roses in a sense, like “Oh bro, I fuck with you from this, this, and that,” and I’m the type of n**** that fuck with you if you fuck with me. Anybody that you’ve seen me with, they fuck with me and that’s why I’m fucking with them.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
Just friends of friends and then you naturally vibe with them and they become your friend.
Robb Bank$: But I never got too close with anybody from Raider Klan though, if I’m being completely honest. I never got too close with anybody there except Purrp. Me and Purrp, that was my dawg. You have to understand that I was never really in Raider Klan; I met all of them through Purrp, so it’s really just, “you are a friend of my friend.”
I think that’s really interesting because you never signed with Rich Gang, for example, but you’ve been affiliated with a lot of big groups.
Robb Bank$: That’s the beauty of being able to do what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m able to bridge little weird gaps. I got to go to the studio with Boldy James and Mikey Rocks and call Zelooperz and tell him to pull up. I could do that. I could go to the studio – pick any random rapper from Atlanta and I could tell ‘em, “Aye, go link with Curry or Trippie Redd, or one of them.” I’m able to be the connector, in a sense, of a lot of the dots behind the scenes. I like that I come with that, to be honest with you. I can tell Stunna, “Aye, go look at this or look at that.” I feel like that’s needed. That’s needed without malicious intent because there are people like that already, but they got their own agendas behind shit whereas I don’t because there’s nothing I can gain from any of it to be real with you. What am I going to gain, a feature? I don’t really want it to be honest with you. I don’t even want to do the song, for real.
Do you think it’s one of those side effects of being who you are? You’re friendly so you’re able to get into all these spaces.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I think so. The funny thing is, I don’t even know how it happens. Truthfully, I’m not friendly at all. I’m one of the most, play the back role type of people that you’ll ever meet. It’s more so people come to me. People come to you and will give you your roses in a sense, like “Oh bro, I fuck with you from this, this, and that,” and I’m the type of n**** that fuck with you if you fuck with me. Anybody that you’ve seen me with, they fuck with me and that’s why I’m fucking with them.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
I think that’s really interesting because you never signed with Rich Gang, for example, but you’ve been affiliated with a lot of big groups.
Robb Bank$: That’s the beauty of being able to do what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m able to bridge little weird gaps. I got to go to the studio with Boldy James and Mikey Rocks and call Zelooperz and tell him to pull up. I could do that. I could go to the studio – pick any random rapper from Atlanta and I could tell ‘em, “Aye, go link with Curry or Trippie Redd, or one of them.” I’m able to be the connector, in a sense, of a lot of the dots behind the scenes. I like that I come with that, to be honest with you. I can tell Stunna, “Aye, go look at this or look at that.” I feel like that’s needed. That’s needed without malicious intent because there are people like that already, but they got their own agendas behind shit whereas I don’t because there’s nothing I can gain from any of it to be real with you. What am I going to gain, a feature? I don’t really want it to be honest with you. I don’t even want to do the song, for real.
Do you think it’s one of those side effects of being who you are? You’re friendly so you’re able to get into all these spaces.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I think so. The funny thing is, I don’t even know how it happens. Truthfully, I’m not friendly at all. I’m one of the most, play the back role type of people that you’ll ever meet. It’s more so people come to me. People come to you and will give you your roses in a sense, like “Oh bro, I fuck with you from this, this, and that,” and I’m the type of n**** that fuck with you if you fuck with me. Anybody that you’ve seen me with, they fuck with me and that’s why I’m fucking with them.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
Do you think it’s one of those side effects of being who you are? You’re friendly so you’re able to get into all these spaces.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I think so. The funny thing is, I don’t even know how it happens. Truthfully, I’m not friendly at all. I’m one of the most, play the back role type of people that you’ll ever meet. It’s more so people come to me. People come to you and will give you your roses in a sense, like “Oh bro, I fuck with you from this, this, and that,” and I’m the type of n**** that fuck with you if you fuck with me. Anybody that you’ve seen me with, they fuck with me and that’s why I’m fucking with them.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
I don’t jump in DMs and be like, “Yo, let’s….” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there probably is something wrong with that. I should probably go out of my way to do more things because people are also standoffish like me and it would probably open more doors, but that’s just not who I am and I’ve got to be myself. Being me, revolved around me being in my own little world and whoever knocks on the door to my little world, I usually let ‘em in if they have good intentions.
It’s like how you were saying that growing up in Broward, everyone was standoffish. You have to protect your peace.
Robb Bank$: It comes with being a real person. I feel like when people meet me they’re like, “Damn, this n**** is what I hoped him to be.” Usually they think that I’m going to be an asshole or something like that, or not who I portray myself to be, but they meet me and they be like, “This n**** cool. He’s actually normal.” I think that comes with it. I think that’s how I’m able to keep the relationships with so many and be an “affiliate” of these weird different groups. I’ve never officially been a part of nothing, It’s always just been me. Robb Bank$. 430. Set. Boom, that’s it.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
I’ve showed love. I showed love to Raider Klan. The only thing where I was actually a part of the group was Members Only, and that was through Jah. That was him like, “Bro, I want you to be a part of this.” That was me to him like, “Yeah, okay.” The rest of everyone in there became my family like, “I got love for all y’all.” I have never claimed to be an original member or anything.
Even with Rich Gang, that was more so my manager at the time. He was locked in with Stunna and all them. I just met Stunna and Stunna looked out and took me under his wing in a sense and put me in the studio for three years like, “Man, go.” They offered me the contract but it ain’t work out. I just wanted to be independent. I was around them for three years. I got to see how they move; I wanted to move like that.
I didn’t want to move like one of the artists that are under them or something like that. I wanted to be Birdman. That be a big misconception. I think people think that I want to be Lil Wayne or something, n****, I want to be Birdman. I really want to be Robb Bank$, but if you’re making me choose between the two, I’m choosing Stunna. I don’t want to be the rapper and the center of attention for my whole life. I want to put n****s on and go on stage with them and throw my shit up. That’s what I want to do. I’ve just got to do a little more building first.
Do you enjoy performing? My head keeps going back to I dont call I dont txt back, where it seems like you enjoy creating the art, but you don’t necessarily love the fame that can surround it.
Robb Bank$: I don’t. I did maybe when I was a kid, because it was all so new. I ain’t really believe in myself when I was young. I had low self-esteem so the fame and all that helped boost it, but once I got right with myself and was able to love myself, I ain’t gone hold you, this shit ain’t my thing, as far as all the craziness that surrounds it. I don’t like touring and moving around city-to-city.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
People forget, they wonder how I’ve been rapping for so long, but like, I was a kid. I’m like one of those old child actors that started real young and now I just feel like, “Alright, this is my life now.” I started out when I was 16. I’m 29 now. Now, I’m an adult. I’m a grown ass man. The art part is what I love. Being able to vent on the mic and make a project and do all the artwork for it, I love all of that. All the extra shit, it’s not my thing. I like performing, but under certain circumstances. I love seeing the fans and everything. I love them. To death. They mean the most in my life, but the touring aspect, no I’m not a fan of it.
Would you rather be by yourself or in the company of others?
Robb Bank$: I like to be by myself and I like to be in the company of loved ones, not just people. I’m cool on that. People I love, I love being around them. I’m a family man. I love my family. For real, for real. When people say that, they usually have kids, but I don’t got kids or nothing like that. I don’t have no wife and shit, but my family, I love being around my family.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
It’s almost two weeks to the date of Calendar’s 12 year anniversary. How do you think your sound has developed since then?
Robb Bank$: It’s changed a lot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes I’m singing, and sometimes it’s autotuned, and sometimes it’s really light, and then some of it be industrial. I think it’s all a reflection of my musical taste. My musical taste is all over the place also. It varies. It reflects all the things that I like to listen to. Everything I like to listen to, I’ve definitely tried to make. I’ve tried to make dancehall, I’ve tried to make industrial, I’ve tried to make black metal, I’ve tried to make hip-hop, I’ve tried to make trap music, all the music I like. I think that’s all that is.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
What does Jamaica mean to you?
Robb Bank$: It means everything to me. That’s where I’m from. That’s the motherland for me. The Caribbean, that’s who I am. I go back there a lot. That’s another thing that inspires me right now. Jamaica, just being there, damn near living there, that inspires the hell outta me. I get to see where I’m from, I get to see my past in a sense. Who I really am. I get to see where my family is from and where they grew up, and I get to see members of my family that at the time I had never met. I get to connect with them, from Rastafarianism to everything, it’s all out there.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
When was the first time you went to Jamaica?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been going there since I was a kid. I just never appreciated it. Growing up, I was born in New York, I came to Florida when I was 6 or 7, then every year in Florida, I’m going back and forth to Jamaica to see my dad. That’s the time I would get to spend with him because I didn’t know him growing up. I didn’t know him until much later in life, until now, to where we’re like this. I grew up between Jamaica and Florida. I would always go back, but I didn’t start appreciating it until later in life, until I got older and I could actually appreciate it. I was kind of spoiled with it. I would go there all the time.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
Did your father doing music inspire you to start making music?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, of course. He was always my superhero in my head, but like I said, I didn’t know him. I didn’t really get to know him until I got older. That’s just one of the sacrifices. It’s one of the earliest lessons I learned from him. When you have a parent or something like that does this for a living, you don’t get to see them, and that’s the sacrifice that you have to live with. You grow up without a parent in a sense. They’re there, but they’re not there.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
I’m saying that because there’s a lot of things that I miss out on. That’s one of the main reasons that I don’t have children. People always be surprised that I don’t have kids and I’m like, “Bro, that’s the most selfish shit you could do.” I lived that life already. I wouldn’t bring no child into this world that I can’t be there 24/8. I’m the type of man where if I have kids, that’s my world. Right now music is my world and my family is my world. That’s one of the earliest lessons from him. It’s a big sacrifice.
Getting back into your discography, let’s talk about FALCONIA. It was five years in the making-
Robb Bank$: Man, that shit is embarrassing. [chuckle] That’s the only reason I made that, but keep going…
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
From what I heard, it was a sequel to Tha City. Is that true?
Robb Bank$: Fuck no. Who the hell said that? [laughs] I might have maybe said some dumb shit like that, fuck no there ain’t no sequel to Tha City. I don’t think it ever will. That’s a project I don’t think I will ever make a direct sequel to. I don’t see that happening ever.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
FALCONIA is just embarrassing to me. Granted, I think it’s a great body of work. I like it, a lot of my core fans – nah, maybe not a lot of my core fans, but there’s a few people that don’t like it, and the only reason they don’t is because they compare it to an earlier version of FALCONIA that got leaked and what they heard from snippets and things like that, and they compare it to that. That’s the problem when you take so long, and that’s why I said it’s embarrassing. I can’t believe I took so long to put out one project, and the only reason I took so long was because I had cold feet and I had fear about what I was putting out. I was scared that, “Oh, they’re not going to like it.” That’s just so pussy. I could never be like that now, but at the time, I wasn’t really in tune with myself like how I am now. Right now, I couldn’t give a fuck. I don’t give a fuck if you like what I like it. Suck my dick! I don’t give a fuck. You can go, I’m not holding you here. If you like it you like it, and if you don’t, hey, wait for the next one, you might like that one. It’s embarrassing to look back and be like I can’t believe I took that long with the project and I’m teasing it like, “IT’S COMING!” I’m never doing that shit again. Hell nah.
This next project, i think i might be happy, this shit got recorded in like a week. I kept having to re-record stuff because I kept putting shit out. I kept putting a song from it, two, three songs from it, four songs from it, and I’m like, “Damn, I put the whole project out.”
A lot of singles I didn’t think would be on the project were on the project.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, because that was half of the project. It was supposed to be more. “Making Love to Fans” and “Broken Promethes,” those two songs, “You Kno It,” all those songs were supposed to be on this Evil Empire project, and I ended up just putting them out. That’s another reason why this project is so short. Originally, it was supposed to be sixteen songs, but I don’t like long projects no more. I really like eight songs. It’s short, but it’s still a little long for me because it’s twelve songs, even though it’s part one. It’s the first disc; the second disc got like eight songs, a smooth eight/seven.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
Why did you decide to split it up?
Robb Bank$: I just wanted to stay true to the mixtape thing, when they would drop part one of the mixtape and then here’s part two. That’s all. There’s nothing deeper to it. I wanted to stay true to the lost art of the mixtape because that shit is gone now. Every album is treated like a mixtape, or how a mixtape used to be treated in a sense. It just comes out, but everyone calls it an album because everyone’s got a rollout. Fuck all that. I’m cool. Just put the fucking music out, bruh.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
It sounds like you only do things if it feels natural.
Robb Bank$: 100%. I don’t do things unless it’s [natural]. I’ll leave if I get somewhere and it feels forced or weird. If I know I’m being genuine and I know someone’s not, I’m leaving. That’s the only beauty of having seniority in this shit. I leave. I don’t need this. Ain’t no mystery in my history and you can’t erase it. You, whoever I’m dealing with, cannot erase me. I made my footprint in this shit already. I can just dip if something doesn’t feel right, but I don’t really put myself in situations like that. Everything I do, or you see me do, it was very genuine, or speaking frank, I was paid. If it’s about that cheese, I’mma get to it. There’s certain shit, if you see me doing certain shit with certain people or you see me doing a certain song, yeah, they threw that bag at me. I’ll never lie about that. Mostly, I like to keep everything organic.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
It feels to me that everything you happen to do organically is always cutting edge.
Robb Bank$: I like that. Thank you. It’s funny you said that, because that’s what I say to everyone when I talk about music. I don’t want to do it if it ain’t cutting edge. I say those exact words. It’s actually crazy you said that. “Cutting edge,” that’s exactly how I want my music to be. I realize I always do something before it gets done. I always tap something before it’s fully [adopted] and I like that because I do it before it completely gets rinsed out and n****s just destroy it and you hate hearing it, or hate seeing it. I do actually like that. I used to hate it and be like, “You n****s is stealing my ideas,” but even for anybody that reads this, “Hey bruh, nobody is stealing your fucking ideas. No one is secretly watching you. And even if they is, what are you gonna do? You gonna cry about it? Shut up. Do better. Make something else. That shit’s been happening to me since the beginning of fucking time. You’ll be okay. You’ll live. I’m a testament that you will live. You will be alright.”
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
How does that feel? You’ve been rapping and been ahead of the curve for so long, you’ve been to all these different places with all these different people, but you’re still making music and still having to promote yourself?
Robb Bank$: I look at it as it’s not too different from an artist. For example, Pablo Picasso, do you know how old that n**** was? That n**** was painting forever, That n**** was painting for life, his whole fucking life. It’s no different than that. I’m just painting and sculpting. This is just what I do. This is my life. You look at Pablo Picasso, that was his job. That’s what he did for a living up until the day he died. I look at it like that. It’s no different. It’s no deeper. Of course, I have my own meanings and certain little things that I don’t really always share and certain shit I don’t get into and I have my own reasons, but on a broad scale, that’s how anybody should look at it. It’s a Picasso sort of thing. I’m an artist and what I do is art. And that’s all I’m going to do. I’m just going to make art.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
As far as i think i might be happy, when did you realize you wanted to put it out?
Robb Bank$: I’ve been toying with the idea of the name. I always knew that it was a project that I wanted to make. I was thinking at the time, maybe two years ago, “My last project is going to be called i think i might be happy,” but I was like, “Eh, why don’t I just make it a mixtape series?” Probably easier for real, than to make some fucking magnum opus. I did that for FALCONIA and I’m so turned off by that idea. The idea of people making this holy grailed album that’s going to change the world when it drops and it’s going to be so amazing and I worked a hundred years on it. Shut the fuck up. That shit is so annoying. That shit is lame, and to be honest, the music that is changing the world and doing everything you wanted to do, it be the shit that just came out.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
Look at 56 Nights by Future. That changed music at the time, and he just dropped it. And I remember the day he dropped it. I was out at the club and I went into the car and was like, “This n**** just dropped a new mixtape.” It was one of them. The Drought Three, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like; No Ceilings, another mixtape that changed how music sounds like. All that building it up shit, I don’t fuck with that. Some people might say that I dumbed [i think i might be happy] down because it’s such a big name that’s attached to my brand.
Do you think you’re happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, that’s one of the main reasons I called it that. I feel like I found what happiness is. I used to think it was other shit like a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of bitches and cars and shit like that and mad jewelry, and I got all that. Maybe there is some more happiness that I don’t know about because I don’t have as much money and jewelry and bitches as certain n****s, but I feel like I have my fair share. That shit doesn’t really make me happy.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
What makes me happy are certain moments with people that you love that you can’t really get back. Being at one with yourself. That’s where my happiness is coming from right now. There’s a difference between happiness and being content. I’m not content by any means. If I was content, I wouldn’t be able to create anymore. I wouldn’t have any more hunger in me to make better art than the year before or the week before. But do I find happiness in what I do? Yes. Do I find happiness in the things around me? Yes. For a long time, I didn’t. I was very pessimistic. That’s kind of gone now.
Did you used to think that you could be happy?
Robb Bank$: Yeah, I did, but I thought it would take some shit that I look at now as childish. Like three pints of Ac[tavis], I’d be like, “I’m so happy.” I would be sitting there with an eight, and I’d be like, “Man, this shit is going to run out.” Stupid shit, like little kid shit, that’s how I used to look at it. “Man, if I could just fuck this bitch,” or, “Man, if I could have this car,” or, “If I could just buy this house….” Then you get the shit. I’m not into material shit, but getting material things for the people I love, that kinda makes me happy now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
Making other people happy.
Robb Bank$: Yeah, seeing other people happy makes me happy now. I was never really like that. I always was deep down in me, but I had a lot of surface level bullshit.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.
What do you want to accomplish in the next stages of your career? You’ve been in the game for far over ten years. What does the future look like for Robb Bank$?
Robb Bank$: I’ve got to correct a lot of the wrongs that I’ve made, to be honest with you. I’ve pushed the wrong message to a lot of my fans and I want to change their outlook on certain things. A lot of them are real pessimistic and angry and mad, and I think a lot of it has to do with their everyday life and the way the world is right now. I ain’t here to change the world, but I’m here to keep with the people that I influence. I’m here to show them and grow with them. There are a lot of things that I put out to them in my music and I want to change that and I want to show them how to grow. That’s what my whole thing is now. I’m writing a book for them too. I’m looking forward to shit like that. Showing them another way because they think there’s one way, but it ain’t really that. Nobody’s really seen who I am now. I don’t do in-depth interviews like that. They don’t know until they see me at a show and get to talking to me like, “What the fuck?” That’s what the fuck I’m on right now.