XXLMag.com: What’s your favorite song by your dad?

Wallace: “Machine Gun Funk” is probably one of my favorites. I remember the first time I heard it I was in the car driving in L.A. and it gave me the best feeling ever.

XXLMag.com: How involved is Diddy in your life?

Wallace: I’m around him all the time. I go over his house and hang out with Christian, Justin and Quincy.

I’ve always been impressed with hip hop lyrics, in just how many there are per line, and the creativity involved. Do you feel the same way?

Honestly, hip-hop and old country music is really not all that different. They’re storytellers just talking about a different story. But, hip-hop is important. I’ve done some things in the hip-hop world, written a couple things for a couple people, and I remember talking to Notorious B.I.G., before he died, and him going, “You know, I learned the art of story telling from my mother listening to Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard.” His mother is from Jamaica, and in Jamaica they only have a reggae station and a country station. His mom liked that stuff, so she only had those records. He goes, “I would listen to these dudes: Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard, and they told stories.”

You take some of the guys, lyrically, like Tupac, Biggie, Jay-Z, and Eminem and those dudes are un-freaking-believable. Listen to the words they are putting together, lyrically and sonically what they’re doing. It’s phenomenal. I’ve sat there and watched Jay-Z sit down and write 16 bar verses and never write anything down. He’ll have it all in his head, then go into the studio and lay it down. That’s bada**. I don’t care who you are. You write songs, and you don’t appreciate that, then you don’t know shit. [laughs] You don’t know anything about writing a song if you can’t appreciate what that’s like while looking at the lyrical content. For me, I’m doing five, six, seven words for their singing one. A lot of my artist friends are like, “How do you remember all that stuff?” I say, “Sometimes I don’t.” That’s what makes real music and live music fun! Sometimes you mess up. That’s okay. That’s music.

I was supposed to sing “You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You)” on [The Notorious B.I.G.’s] Life After Death album, and I don’t know what happened with that not happening ...

DX: You mentioned Biggie, did he reach out to you personally?

D.V. Alias Khryst: No, my attorney … had called me around the time of that project being worked on and told me that someone that he had spoke to – don’t remember their name – had inquired about me doing that record. I was very excited when I heard about that, because [I had] known Biggie for some time …. I was around Big and [Lil] Cease and them - and Smoothe was around these dudes - smoking blunts on the stoop with these dudes before a lot of this stuff transpired and went the direction that it went. So, to see his career go the way it went, and for me to had gotten an [invitation] to do a record with him on the [strength] of how our paths [had] always crossed – even from the “Dead Presidents” video shoot with Jay-Z, and showing Smoothe and everybody that was at the round table – I [thought it] would be a wonderful opportunity. But, when it didn’t happen I was a little funked about it because I felt like that could have been a great opportunity for the world to hear me and to give me the platform to really show people what I’m made of, [as] opposed to the box that I’ve been placed in.