In the L.A. underground hip-hop scene, King Lil G has been killing the competition for the past few years. G grew up listening to Snoop Dogg and as he got older, he turned from street life to music as a way to express himself. He's one of the many rising Latino rappers in Compton who tell stories so vivid that listening to each song is like watching a film in an IMAX theater. After a string of solid projects -- Lost in Smoke 2, 90's Kid and AK47Boyz -- a handful of singles -- "Grow Up" and "Hopeless Boy" -- and plenty of sold-out shows, King Lil G is one to watch this year. But don't tell that to this tatted up spitta. He has a lot more he wants to accomplish.

"I have a plan on doing weed festivals," he says to XXL while in New York. "If God permits, I want to do weed festivals and I want to do more music with Harry Fraud. Harry Fraud’s music just does something to my soul. I’m going to continue on doing underground shit ‘cause that’s what I do. I think with my last album Lost In Smoke I tried to do commercial records but I learned something about myself. That’s continue on doing music that I love because that’s what fans love the most."

With his AK47Boyz behind him and more new music on the way, fans should get to know King Lil G before he blows up.

Name: King Lil G

Age: 30

Hometown: Inglewood, Calif. and South Gate, L.A.

I grew up listening to: “I grew up listening to Snoop Dogg, mainly. Doggystyle was the first album I got a hold of. As the years went by I got into Eazy-E and everyone else from the West Coast. I [started rapping] by just recording off a little karaoke machine when I was a little kid. Never really took it serious until 2010. I think the street life put me against the wall and I had to make a decision on what I wanted to do in life. Music was my only shelter."

"[Before] I would write songs here and there to try more or less to improve my storytelling skills because there is a difference from wanting to write a dope club record, freestyling and telling sick ass stories. I think Biggie and 2Pac was really good at that. I think the best artists were always good at that. I wanted to improve myself when it came to that. I wanted to make sure I was describing shit and getting to the point extremely fast. I wanted to make sure I was going bar for bar, talking about socks with holes in them, not having anything for Christmas, my pops sleeping with another woman, just saying a bunch of shit that would hit people’s hearts extremely strong. I always told myself I would be extremely successful if I can touch people’s hearts with my music so that’s what I focused on the most."

"The stuff that I rap about now it’s definitely what kids go through. Coming from dysfunctional families, being at home, boredom. I try to express to my community being at home bored as a kid or teenagers, when parents do that sometimes [kids] make the wrong decisions due to boredom. I think boredom made me start to write. I needed to express myself about what’s going on with my family, gang shit going on, me going to the alley and seeing graffiti in old English letters and muthafuckas tatted on their face. I felt that I couldn’t express this to my family, friends, nor my teachers at my school. I couldn’t tell them this kind of shit. I felt music was my only way."

Most people don’t know: “When I’m not doing music I love to be a regular fucking person and be at regular parties and simple shit. I don’t really like expensive things besides having a sick whip. That’s because I like picking my son up in that type of a car. So my accomplishments can reflect more to his eyes less than mine. When I'm with my family, I don’t really want attention, I don’t really want pictures. I just like to be normal. Now it’s kind of impossible because where I come from everyone knows who I am. I want to smoke weed with regular muthafuckas that’s tatted up in the face just like me. I don’t want to have stardom, I don’t want to have a shit ton of bodyguards, I don’t want to be excluded from the regular world."

My style’s been compared to: “People compare my music to storytelling music. They compare my music to hip-hop that came from the 1990s. That’s why I called my [project] 90’s Kid. It’s just so hard to attach myself to the new sound that’s going on right now. I like trap music. don’t get me wrong. This is something that I always tell my friends, just because we like a certain type of music don’t mean we have to sound like that type of music. We have to sound like where we sound like, where we came from. I’m very prideful of our sound that we have. My sound is very West Coast with a new drum pattern."

My standout records or moments to date have been: “When I sold out Nokia Theatre [now known as Microsoft Theater] next to the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. I think that was unexpected for me but it was good for the hip-hop culture. I know other artists who are very big in the hip-hop game who aren’t able to sell out that venue. I don’t take big pride in saying I sold it out and they didn’t. I just think it was very good for the culture of hip-hop."

My goal in hip-hop is: “My goal in hip-hop is to do a song with the greatest [rappers]. I want to do a song with the greatest storytellers like J. Cole, to do the song with the best. I want to do a song with Talib Kweli too. I like him a lot. I want to do a song with whomever from Wu-Tang Clan, Mobb Deep and definitely with Snoop Dogg. Snoop is the originator of our sound. He’s what we’re all trying to sound like. And that’s the truth."

I’m gonna be the next: “I would say I am the new idea of what N.W.A had in the beginning when you watch Straight Outta Compton and people was looking at them strange as fuck like, 'What is that?' [laughs] When they were performing at that club and people were fucking feeling it. I’m that idea, I’m that new idea and I think people are starting to understand it."

Follow King Lil G on Twitter and SoundCloud.

Standout: Lost in Smoke 2

90's Kid

AK47Boyz

"Cold Christmas"

"Grow Up"

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