"I Don't Remember Things That Don't Mean a Lot to Me"

Two Chainz—Grammy-winning rapper, entrepreneur, and now New York Times bestselling author—didn't know he had a bestseller until other people told him. "I just really had my head down," he says. That detail sets the tone for a conversation that is less about hip-hop stardom and more about how a kid from the trap in Atlanta learned to listen to the voice in his head, build discipline by watching Lil Wayne, and eventually let go of a double life that nearly cost him everything.

The Secret Sauce Nobody Talks About

The book, The Voice in My Head Is God, started with an idea about intuition—"this divine guidance that I'd been using for a very long time and really hadn't shared it in any music, any platform, any interviews." It was, he says, "almost like this secret sauce."

The title crystallized when he found a stack of his incarcerated father's letters from 2003. For years he had ripped open the envelopes, read the contents, and ignored the back. "It was God's love on the envelope," he says. "God is love. If it got love in it, it has God in it." That realization unlocked the book.

He brought his musical instincts to the process: he recorded the audiobook himself, adding production—tire screeches, sirens—so that scenes felt cinematic. "I just made it really fun to do."

Growing Up in Plain Sight