Complex: So if you have 270 songs and nobody's heard them, how do you get paid off them?
LIL WAYNE: Tax and little shit. When niggas get shit that be leaking, we gotta figure out a way to beat this leak shit-out of 200 something songs, you're going to get songs leaked, so that's why I just do everyone at the same ability or hype. I try to top the last songs I've done basically. Now we've found a little way, we can actually, I don't know if you can-but we sell the songs to a company that wants them, most of the time ring tones.

C: Do you think that having so many songs out for free makes people not want to pick up the album?
LIL WAYNE: No, I think if that's the case then you're stupid because you read the whole play wrong. When you hear me on everybody's beat, that's my promotion, I am my promotion. I sat down with my team at Universal, and I had to let them know I don't want a street team. I was like, "I don't want you to have to tell a person to play Lil Wayne's album or please can you spin this, I don't want that, I want those motherfuckers calling y'all like, 'where the fuck is that Lil Wayne album?'" I'm my best promotion, straight up, I get better on everything you hear, every song you hear you think it's mine and some people be actually upset that it isn't.

C: Is there a statement you're trying to make with the album?
LIL WAYNE: Nah...not at all, not at all, I don't make statements, I make moves.

C: Do you think your life has a meaning?
LIL WAYNE: Yeah it does, of course. I don't care, I'm not worried if it has a meaning to the world-but to my family and friends, yes my life has a meaning, I live through them.

C: So if you were to pass away, what would you want the statement of your life to be, how would you want to be remembered by the world?
LIL WAYNE: I can't answer that question either because if I tell you how I want a motherfucker to perceive me while I'm [young], then I need to be pinched because I got too much bullshit time on my hands to tell you what another person should be thinking about me, fuck no. I can see red out of my eyes, you can see blue so people love me, people hate me, people like me, people never heard of me. I can't answer the question for all those people.

C: What do you listen to these days?
LIL WAYNE: Me! All day, all me. Ask me this question too: do I not like anybody? Nah, it ain't that, I got friends in this whole industry, everybody who do anything is cool with me, but you're not about to see Kobe at AI's game, chilling, watching. He gonna be working on being Kobe, making Kobe better but that's how I do me, I gotta listen to me, critique and analyze everything, every time you hear music playing. I don't want to be without that Aaliyah, "Let Me Know," "Killing Me Softly," shit like that. I don't really listen to no rap.

C: You seem to be singing a lot more now too.
LIL WAYNE: Mmmm, hmmm. Pain, that's all that is, pain, pain brings that out you.

C: Where's the pain coming from these days?
LIL WAYNE: Me. If you blame something else for your pain then you're an asshole. You are your pain, nigga. You can cut yourself right now. That don't hurt because you are your pain. If it hurts you, then you done that, it's a mind thing. You ever notice when you have a very stuffy nose or you have a cold and you eat something, you don't taste nothing, you be like, "I can't eat nothing, I can't taste it, I'm hungry," that's because you don't actually taste nothing, you know what I mean? You are you, you make everything around you. You make water, you make the sky, because it's you, if you don't want that to be water then it ain't water, fuck. It's you, so...ya dig?

C: So is there anybody you're competing against?
LIL WAYNE: Ask Oscar De La Hoya because he's a beast, because he caught Floyd Mayweather and Floyd Mayweather got like 10 million and they say he [Oscar] got like 25 million. When Michael Buffer started speaking he didn't say broadcasting live from Showtime HBO, that nigga said, his first words were, "Brought to you by Golden Boy Promotions..." That's his fight, I don't give a fuck, beat me, you made my fight, [claps] thank you. Can you please whoop my ass again on TV? It was the most viewed fight ever in history; I broke records, thank you. That's how you gotta think man, that nigga's a monster. Him, Tom from MySpace and Bill Gates, I just wanna smoke three blunts with them, just three, just three blunts, I bet you I'll come back high, whoo, them niggas are beast.

C: What about Mark Cuban?
LIL WAYNE: He's a G for real, I saw him coming out of my condos one day with an iPod on him and two big niggas with him, ain't no security. They were just rocking, three together. I ain't got no racist issues, but when you see a cracker with two niggas, you know that cracker got all that money, he don't even need to see a nigga, no black people ever need to come in his eyesight he's so rich-and these your homeboys? I respect the fuck out of him for that, you know, and he ain't see me but he saw my homie, he asked him what's popping tonight, he's a G for real, so I fuck with Mark Cuban heavy. I love a nigga who do what the fuck he want, just like I told you, Martin Luther King said we can do what the fuck we want, he do what the fuck he want, him and Bam Margera. What will Bam do next? Whatever the fuck they want...that's one of my favorite shows.

C: [Laughs] What's your writing process like? You just jot everything down?
LIL WAYNE: I don't write nothing, I just keep ideas and never fucking use them. I just write down shit, like bad situations or stories. Jot them down as I go, like, cool idea, and if I fucking remember when I'm in the studio-when I'm in the studio, when I hear a new song, I'm going to start a line off fresh and I always just keep going because I be like, "I'm killing it right now but I know I got some bad ass ideas written down."

C: How do you lay down your verses?
LIL WAYNE: Sporadically. I just be chilling, drinking, smoking and I'm like turn the mic on. I visualize a lot of things too, I like to see it before I say it, how I want to look on the video or if it's going to be a single, I take it all the way down to if I was rapping this motherfucker song a capella to a person that don't know or like me, that's how I approach every song, how can I get a person to pay attention to it? I ain't gotta get you to like me but I can get a person to pay attention. Like, the people you're sitting next to on the plane and they're wondering why the fuck you're sitting next to them in first class, I want them to be able to ask me a question and I'll be able to start rapping to them and they don't even know it's a rap. That's how you do it, that's how you bring people into whatever you want to bring them into.

C: I see...
LIL WAYNE: What I mean is, if you working the door at the Trump Towers, and when you got the job they told you to say "hello" or "goodbye" to everybody that pass out that motherfucker, but when you clock out and you work your door at your house, you don't even speak to motherfuckers, or you be like, "what up nigga". You can't come to the Towers and say "what up nigga," you gotta say, "hello" and "goodbye." Now it's on you to get your point across to where even they say "what up, nigga." You gotta figure out a way to make them motherfuckers feel exactly what you're saying because everybody went through the same thing, the whole world. Black, white, green, yellow, purple, dogs, animals, people, we all go through the same thing, ain't no different shit about us, nobody.

C: Did you ghostwrite Tity Boi's verse on "Duffle Bag Boy"?
LIL WAYNE: Hell no, everybody be asking that, it's so great that people think I wrote it because it shows that I am helping the game. I'm making niggas get on their shit. He's just so much on his shit to where y'all actually thought I wrote it. Like I wrote an album with Juelz Santana and I ain't going to lie, niggas ain't going to listen to that shit in New Orleans for some years. I can't help but be competitive, niggas is spitting and I'm glad because you gotta look at it like when Biggie was doing it. When Biggie and Pac did it, they didn't have anybody trying to beat them.

C: To what extent do you think competition has helped today's rap game?
LIL WAYNE: I really can ride and listen to the radio now, you know what I mean, because whatever comes on, niggas ain't on no bullshit no more. You got Rick Ross, he's spitting, you got Jeezy, he's spitting, Plies, these people been out. "If I don't do nothing I'ma ball, counting all day like a clock on a wall": man, I gotta talk, because people are listening. "Bling Bling," that shit went everywhere, nobody even knows I made that. White people be like, "You have bling bling in your mouth." I'd be like, "do you know I created that term?" You know what I mean?

C: Right
LIL WAYNE: It ain't that no more, it ain't the, "Back That Ass Up" era no more. Like I was saying, I made it to where, these fly niggas in the game, it was Puffy, Jay, you gotta put on a Versace t-shirt, hat, glasses, all that. You can throw on a v-neck and walk down the red carpet at the Grammys. But let me break real down to you, we done made it to where you can actually wear a colorful pair of tennis shoes with a check and a star, with an ape on it, a colorful hoodie, you look like a fucking cartoon and you can actually make a song about it and people going to love it. Now who the hell dumbed down fashion like that? Who created a path so you can do that? Who started wearing Bapes? I mean no disrespect to the Clipse, nor Pharrell and them, but I was the hottest nigga to ever have Bapes on...quote that, and I'm the hottest nigga that'll never put another piece of it on because of the way they did me.

C: How'd they do you?
LIL WAYNE: No disrespect to nobody and I fuck with the homie Nigo. He's cool as a motherfucker because he let me keep the shit, wear whatever, it's nothing against him and I ain't stopping wearing because the Clipse said. I stopped wearing because I don't want no more problems. I don't want y'all niggas to think I wanna be like y'all and y'all get mad at me. We brought y'all through the 'Nolia way back in 2002. We brought y'all through there so y'all was straight, feel me, niggas showed y'all love then they fuck with Gillie-you know, that's a whole story; he was on the video so that's why I really kind of thought that this is about me, they shoulda said my name, is that a promotion? But like I said, I just don't want no problems so that's why I took it off, plain and simple, I don't want no beef because beef is a different fucking thing from where I'm from, I don't want that, I don't want that at all, I-don't-want-that.

C: Do you think you will ever settle down with one woman?
LIL WAYNE: I think they don't commit to a nigga, they committed to a myth. I'll be on the road two weeks straight, the whole time I'm telling them, "oh I'm coming home, oh I love you blah, blah, blah" soon as I get there, I done pulled in about seven that evening, at 10 I'm going straight to the studio. Ain't no woman want to get into that. I got marriage in the future, though. I just don't talk too much about it, because I ain't sure yet, that's the example of saying I'm engaged and nothing happened and I ain't do that, but marriage in the future, hopefully. You know the person when you just ain't ask it yet, [laughs] I ain't ask her yet but...

C: Does she know who she is?
LIL WAYNE: Mmm-hmm. I was thinking hard, the [BET] Awards are tomorrow, so I had the ring-I don't have it with me, I was trying to get it for tomorrow, but it's a problem, fuck y'all up.

C: You were going to propose on stage?
LIL WAYNE: I was going to hopefully win the award, I was going to do it like this: if I had that ring I'm not going to do it on the reg, I'm only going to do it if I win the award. If I win the award then I'm supposed to get married, but no I didn't get the ring from them so I'm not going to do it. She'll be there tomorrow, though.

C: What scares you?
LIL WAYNE: Never having a wife, a not-leaving wife.

C: Really?
LIL WAYNE: I don't want to do that shit alone, like my family and friends can come and share the weekends if they want, but I want to make somebody happy. You look at the future, you expect it would be you and some kids and so on. I think a woman gets a glimpse of that when they fuck with me, that's the beginning basically, they see that what I just said, they see that and that's hard to look over.

C: You claim Baby as your father, did he ever have to discipline you?
LIL WAYNE: Yeah, if you take discipline as giving me game. He never has because I always had those three brothers and them niggas is a problem. You look at discipline as telling me things, giving me a way, showing me an example of a better way to live, a way to do things, that discipline he's giving me. Him and his brother Slim, but as far as discipline I been my own discipline. Like my mama, she got a harsh way of talking, that's why I rap, I might tell these niggas "go eat your mama's pussy" and don't mean no word, letter of it, that's how my mama talk. Basically she never had to touch me or nothing like that but her words. [laughs] They come after your heartbeat.

C: Now when you say your three brothers you're referring to the Hot Boy$?
LIL WAYNE: Yup.

C: Are you still in touch with them?
LIL WAYNE: We back! [Laughs] That's the new thing, everybody's back, we ain't started yet but we about to do the thing over. The first single they did, you know we got B.G. on there and Mannie did the beat. Hot Boy$, my brothers, we coming, we definitely coming. We're going to be heard.

C: How did you guys get back together?
LIL WAYNE: The zone, I always just take a stand because I gotta rock with my team and if you have problems with my team, you got problems with me, but now you know they saying that they don't have a problem, they clearly stated that. My team also. I find we're more mature; to take someone's problem and call it mine, that'll kill you and I don't want to die. I don't have problems with none of them. Also the business aspect-they could be on my label, I'm going to plan the Baby return minus the trouble, and that's when it was like "OK, I'm not doing it for the money, I'm doing it because I love these niggas." I always say if you think I'm doing this for the money then I don't need that. I could do me and make more. I started with them, I'm trying to end with them, so here, shine the light.

C: So who approached you with the idea for the reunion?
LIL WAYNE: Somebody said Juve want you on the phone. B.G. of course is like y'all going to do it? Y'all going to do it? Y'all going to do it? And once it came back from that end to me it was like-you should do this and get off your fucking high horse and be like "what are you guys going to do?" A solider, we make a solider, didn't New Orleans tell you, whatever we say, believe it man. Third world country New Orleans. They tried to wipe us off the map for real.

C: A lot of people, word on the streets including myself here, think that Kanye took you on that "Barry Bonds" joint...
LIL WAYNE: He took me?

C: Yeah.
LIL WAYNE: I think he did too, meaning his verse was better. Yeah but I'm going to get him. 'Ye killed me on that song. I was tight because I was like it could be way hotter than this. So when I heard his verse I was like "oh, we doing this again." I done it twice, they got two different versions. I done one and I ain't hear his verse and I done the other one after I heard his verse and even when I finished I said why don't you let him be the man of song. Meaning that it was needed and what I've done nobody else can do it.