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Ab-Soul's highly anticipated release, These Days..., drops tomorrow and with a slew of music and visuals from the project already out, Soulo is now on the interview tip to promo the album. While sitting down with Complex, the Black Lip Pastor spoke on the heavy influence Jay Z and Nas have had on his career, his lean-sipping habit, and cleared up the label rumors that have been circulating leading up the release.

"TDE only, I was never signed to Interscope," explained Soul. "Very important to know, it's as simple as that. Kendrick went over to Aftermath / Interscope, Q went over to Interscope. It was just us trying out with the larger brands and branching off. It's all a strategy but at the same time, was Death Row an independent label? Are we calling [TDE] the right thing here? I don't really hear too many people calling Death row or Roc-A-Fella an independent record label. They probably had distributors or cross-branded but independent sounds a lot smaller than major and I think we do it major."

“I originally wanted to do a song about stigma,” he explained when asked about quoting Nas’s “The Cross” on his "Stigmata" hook. “Doing research on that, I thought of the word ‘stigmata,’ I thought that was just like a extension of the word. So I looked it up and rediscovered what ‘stigmata’ actually meant. I usually quote Nas and Jay Z at least once or twice on every project. That was just the one for this one in particular.”

A few months back, Soul publicly voiced his displeasure at how long his project was taking to come out and threatened to leak the music himself. During the interview, Ab spoke on why he was frustrated. "I'm one of the original members of TDE which gives me pretty cool seniority in the company," said Soul. "It wasn't like I was being shelved, we just wanted to make sure we were all on the same accord and we all like the material being presented. We like to move as a team. I was only expressing my frustrations because of the time. I've been working this whole two years, I didn't want people to think I wasn't working."

[Complex]

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