On Bone's Grammy-winning song "Tha Crossroads" you sang "I miss my Uncle Charles, y'all." Tell me about your Uncle Charles.

Uncle Charles was my mother's brother. He had retired, but he'd worked for Ford so he had a little bit of change. He was real fly. He'd get up every day and put on a suit. He drove Lincolns and Cadillacs. He was the uncle who'd come around and take us to the movies; everybody got five dollars. But he was also the one that was really behind us in our music career, because that's what he wanted to do too. He used to listen to our little mix tapes we'd bring home, just encourage us. All our talent shows he'd be in the front row, every one.

Your mother Noreen is a big Bone fan too, right?

My momma? She one of us! She don't even act her age at show time. She show up Boned out, skullies, rag hanging out of her pocket, everything. When we were starting out, we used to sing for my mother all the time. She'd make us sing a song "I Miss You" by a local Cleveland group called Men At Large. That helped us develop our vocals, and then we got comfortable singing and rapping. She lives in Cleveland Heights now, close to Mayfield, in a house I bought her.

On "Teach The World" you rapped, "To the little boys and girls all over the world/this shit we say is for the streets/not for you to go and do/please if we can no more murder." Dividing lines are seldom made clear for kids today listening to hip-hop.

You can't just do songs for the trend. We got to make meaningful rap. Party rap is cool, but we got to get a message sometime too because life is not just partying all the time. That was one of my favorite songs ever. We were trying to tell the world how we felt about what was going on, so we went in there with that mindstate.

There's an iconic image from back in the day of Bone standing around a garbage-can fire. Did you really do that?

Hell yeah, it get cold in Cleveland! You ain't got nowhere to go and you out there serving, so best thing to do is light up one of them barrels full of trash and wood. But you gotta wait until late at night when the police ain't riding that hard. But once you got that barrel, you can stay out there all night.

Where did you have the barrel?

We had one on 99th and one in back of Miller's, a store where we'd get liquor on 101st, 102nd.

How far did Bone's turf stretch?

I'd say from Eddy Road to 77th, that was our territory, where we'd roam through and everybody was cool.

Other than LeBron, who are you feeling on the Cavs?

Z. I like Larry Hughes a lot too. Varejao, the Wild Child, he be rebounding like a mutha. When he come in the game he about to bang down low!

You're the only member of Bone who currently claims Cleveland as his primary residence.

I think Cleveland is a good place. Inner city is rough, but the outskirts is real beautiful, and great schools there. Plus my family, my mom and my sisters, they're all in Cleveland, so it's easier for me to be there than anywhere else.

Are your boys big like you?

Yeah, them gon' be big. My youngest son he sing in church, do solos and errythang. My boys (ages 14, 10 and 8) are all monsters on the football field, they off the hook. I played my freshman year for Lincoln West. Then I stopped playing football and was barely even going to school. Then I went to Max Hayes, that didn't work out. But being in Bone, that's worked out pretty good.