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Deniro Farrar is a different type of rapper. With a multitude of MCs rapping about money, cash, drugs, clothes and hoes, to hear someone revert back to storytelling-conveying one's life as vividly as they can through their words-is truly refreshing. Farrar's life is one that is filled with more than one interesting story. Born into a big family with no father in a rough area around Charlotte, North Carolina, one can easily throw away their life away and succumb to the negative environment. However, this 26-year-old noticed his potential and was intelligent enough to put his talents into better use.

From Feel Me to The Patriarch 2, not only do you hear the overall quality of his music getting better, you also witness an artist becoming his own. The following for the self-proclaimed leader of cult rap is growing more and more with each tape. The increased fanbase have never stopped to show a ridiculous amount of devotion to him. Just a few weeks after The Patriarch 2 released on June 18, XXL got on the phone with Farrar to discuss his upbringing, how he got into rap, and why he's going full speed in his lane.—Emmanuel C.M. (@ECM_LP)

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On growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina:

Deniro Farrar: "It was good and bad. It had its ups and downs. I had six brothers and two sisters. We grew up in a small apartment in a poverty stricken area of the city. I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina. Single mom. Dad got killed when I was really, really young. So, basically,[I] kinda [was] like every other ghetto kid growing up.

"I knew I was different from all the other kids. I was like really, really smart. Academically gifted. But back in elementary school, I always felt I had to be a certain type of way because of the environment I lived in, so I always got into fights. I never really liked to fight, but I would always fight cause I felt I had to. I was just always different from the other kids. I knew I was a good kid, but I always hung with bad kids in my neighborhood, the baddest kids. And they always thought I was bad, cause my family had a reputation in the neighborhood I grew up in. They was already running through the neighborhood before I came about. It was like, my family, that side of town was really, really known, so they just kind of associated me with being that type of kid, so I felt I had to be that kid, but I was really a good kid. It’s just that good kid, bad city syndrome."

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On his influences:

Deniro Farrar: "I was listening to Kriss Kross, I was the biggest Kriss Kross fan ever. I used to wear my shit backwards. My mother used to tell my teachers like, “Man, let me know if he wears his clothes backwards to school,” cause they was gonna whoop me and shit—well she was gonna whoop me, not them. Kriss Kross, man. ”Jump” was the first rap song I ever learned word for word and ever since then, it was just a part of me, I love that shit.

"My older brother, Mario, he was older, so he had the money to buy CDs, cause the internet wasn’t really poppin’ back then. Niggas weren’t downloading music, and it wasn’t really bootleg CDs like that, so he was actually going out and purchasing the albums, and I was just listening to everything. From Three 6 Mafia, Lauryn Hill, Luther Vandross, Tupac, Master P, everything. I was listening to Dead Prez, Goodie Mob’s Soul Food, Aquemini. I was just a young rap head; I liked all types of rap. I just started loving music, and I started listening to everything, like Kings of Leon, Adele, a lot of different kinds of music."

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On getting into rap:

Deniro Farrar: "Man, I was like freestyling. I'd get high and freestyle. I’d be at my older brother's lil’ traphouses, I’d be in there rappin’. They’d be like “Man, shut the fuck up! Why you always rappin’?” [Laughs.]  It’s like Boyz N Da Hood, they was like “Why you always carry that basketball around?” and it’s a football. And he’s like “That’s what Imma do. Imma play football.” So I always rap and they’d be like, “Shut up man. Why you always rapping?” and I’d be like, “Cause I’m a rapper!” So I I always freestyle. I was younger at the time. I was probably like 16.

"I learned how to freestyle, I perfected freestyling before I even learned how to write music. I was like a dope freestyler. Dope! Like people would be like, “Yo you wrote that?” I’d be like “Nah, you know, freestyle,” so I was dope. And like I didn’t really become a rapper until 2011. I dropped my first mixtape in 2010, Feel This. It was like 31 tracks. I was just goin’ crazy man."

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On meeting famed manager from Charlotte, David Luddy:

Deniro Farrar: "David Luddy, I met him outside a nightclub, and my homeboy, Mr. Cuddi, Mr. Nascar [was there.] It was an awards ceremony going on outside of the club, and he wore like this 106 & Park thing, so all of them was out there, and I just freestyled.

"Really, how I meet him, I was at the bar and then I jumped in front of them. He was like, "Man, you gonna jump me like that?" I was like, "My bad, man, I didn't even see you. What you wanna drink?" He was like, "Nah, you good," then he bought me a drink. Then, I just walked away from 'em. When I got outside, he approached me and was like, "Yo, so what do you do?" I was working at the time, I didn't tell him I was a rapper. I was like, "I don't do nothing." And he was like, "Oh, I thought you was a rapper.” And I was like, “I can rap.” I spit a freestyle for him in front of everybody, and he was like, “Yo, you dope!”

"He emailed me a beat later on that night, and he was like, “Let me know when you got the track written, I’ll pick you up and take you to my studio.” So me just being small-minded, thinking he wanted something from me, I didn’t know what his intention was. I took a gun over to the dude’s house and everything. But I get there and it’s like a half-a-million dollar house, and I’m like, “Good God almighty, who is this dude?” He’s got a basement and it’s a studio, and a videographer, and a green room for videos, I’m like “Who is this dude?” So, he led me to the booth and played the beat that he sent me. I went in there and killed it, and he was like, “Yo, that’s tight man. Put a double on it.” I didn’t know anything about doubling at the time, so I’m like, “What’s that?” He was like, “rap it over again.” I got nervous, I was like “God, all right.” He played the beat, I rapped something totally different, but it was dope. He was like, “Come out the booth, man.” Then he was like, “You can’t write music, can you?” I was like, “Nah." He was like, “Well you gon’ learn.” And then I wrote music for like 12 hours a day, for like a year straight.

"He actually told me to quit my job. He was like, “Yo, how much they pay you at your job, when do they pay you?” And I told him, and he was like, “Bring me one of your paycheck stubs,” and I brought it to him. He was like, “How bad you wanna rap?” And I was like, “I really wanna rap,” and he was like, “All right, well, quit your job then. Call them now and tell them you quit.” I was like, “What?” He was like, “Yeah, I’ll pay you every week. I’ll pay you what they paid you, I just want you to rap every day.” So I quit my job, bruh, and every day for a year straight he had me writing rhymes. That’s how I perfected it so fast—the art of writing music."

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On the meaning behind cult rap:

Deniro Farrar: "It’s real. Like my Twitter explains everything, man. I had this dude on my Twitter when I dropped Patriarch 2, he was going crazy about the Kanye tape like, “Yo, if it ain’t Yeezus, I ain’t bumpin’ it!” Man, one of my followers snapped on that dude, you know what I’m saying? [Laughs.] It's cult man for real, they ain't playing, and this coming from Switzerland, France, New Zealand, Australia. I’m not forcing my music on these people. See that’s what these labels do, they have so much influence over everything because they’re [a] multi-media empire so they can get the music out through so many outlets whether it be via Internet or video magazine. They have connects like that. Right now, we do this on our own. People are coming to this at will, but once they come to it they like, “Yo we love this dude.” Anybody that has stumbled across my music became a fan. Straight up. And the first thing that stuck is why am I just now hearing about this? And I'm like, "They don’t want you to hear this." When people find me on Twitter, they be like, "Why am I just now hearing about you?" Because they don’t want you to hear about me man. [I] never lie in anything I do. I’m the truth."

On the story behind The Patriarch and The Patriarch 2:

Deniro Farrar: "If you listen to Patriarch 2, it’s a little more well put together than part one. Like, it’s really well thought out and the production--all of that--it's really, well thought out man. Part one was a mistake. Part two was really supposed to be part one, but I just got so impatient I wanted to put out some content, cause I hadn’t dropped anything since Kill Or Be Killed with Shady Blaze. I really felt like party one was about the manager I had before Meko came along. He was being on me working with producers that nobody had ever heard of.

"But see, what I was telling him, if the music is good, it’s good. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big name or a small name. It helps to have a bigger name, but at the end of the day, you can’t knock good music. At that’s what part one was, all the producers that really didn’t have a big name. I threw one or two Ryan Hemsworth tracks on there just to give it that extra umph, you know what I’m saying? But nobody really heard of a lot of the people that was on part one. Kira, Different Sleep, Friendzone, [producers] of that nature. I was really shedding light on that cause we had made so much good music together, but it was really kept in the dark because they wasn’t big. And I was just like, “Man, Imma break out of that whole thing,” because I read a couple write ups saying “Deniro, back at it again, going to the go-to blog producers,” and it kinda pissed me off cause I’m like, "Man, I don't need people feeling like I need these blog-worthy producers to make me hot, because I'm hot on my own." I just wanted to get that recognition as a dope artist, so that’s what that was all about.

"I had so many collabs on Destiny Altered, like Shady Blaze, ST 2 Lettaz, they were heavy on the blogs that time, so I was like, "Man, hell nah. I don't wanna build my name off some other dude's man. I don't want the public to see me like that, so I'mma just let them know I have talent." That’s why I had no features on Patriarch, except that girl that was singing. I had no features on there, I’m a beast on my own. I want people to know that. That’s why I didn’t have no rap features on part two, and I ain’t gonna have no rap features from now on, unless they bigger than me, you know what I’m saying? I will not have a rap feature on none of my CDs unless I put Duru the King on there because he’s down with my generation. I started a generational movement and threw the King down with my movement. He’s from my city, that’s my brother, so I put him on there, cause he’s talented and people need to hear him. But other than that, if it ain’t somebody from my generation, it’s gonna be someone bigger than me, because I’m gonna end up being bigger than them one day. But for the moment, I need somebody bigger than me, so I can be next level with it. If I’m gonna do it, it’s gonna make sense from now on, for me to work with another rapper. Other than that, I’ll do it by myself, or with my generation."

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On beats selection:

Deniro Farrar: "I don’t [pick beats], they pick me. When I hear the beat I’m like, "Ok, I can’t vibe nothing." It gotta grab me and when the beat grab me, I know it’s for me. It will grab me because I never had to think too hard on the lyrics and on the concepts cause it already be there, the beat be saying it to me. I just hum the melody and it come to me. If I can’t see me pouring out my soul on it, I don’t want to do it, because I know the music I am making. My cousin was like, “Stop making struggle rap". But nigga, they is someone out there that struggle all the time you got to know that. He may want to hear that glorify all this nonsense and this vanity. I got these really, really artsy producers and that shit made me, me. And it’s the production plus the lyrics and the content on these records. Combine together makes Deniro Farrar. I’m really thankful for the production that I have, I got some dope ass producers and its crazy because they helped mold me into the artist I am right now. If it wasn’t for the production, I’ll be the same ass rapper as everybody else. I have attractive beats. You can’t put no swag rap on what I do, it’s going to make you look stupid."

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On carving his own lane:

Deniro Farrar: "My lane is my life, you know what I’m saying? That’s one thing no rapper could ever take from me. That’s one thing nobody could ever say I falsified. You know, that’s one thing people can’t say, “Aw man, you know, he fabricated all of that.” Because anybody that I grew up with, anybody that knows me, it’s easy for a stranger to tell me I fabricated everything I say cause they don’t know me. You’re just used to all these other rappers fabricating and lying about this and that, exaggerating, overplaying things, really narrating someone else’s life in their rhymes. They’re used to that, so what makes me any different when they don’t know me? So everybody that knows me knows, this is my lane, my life, can’t nobody take that from me. This is my life, which would make it my lane and nobody else’s lane, cause I can’t rap nobody else’s life. People just identify with the things that I’ve been through, and automatically they grow attached to my music, cause we’ve got some of the same struggles. And I pull them into my lane, I don’t rap about nobody else’s lane. I don’t talk about stuff that’s like somebody gossiping, I ain’t never been a gossip type dude, like “Oh, I heard such and such, yadda yadda yadda.” If I wasn’t there, if I don’t know it for a fact, I ain’t talkin’ about it. So at the end of the day, that’s my lane. I just be myself and it works."

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