After catching up with Pusha T, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Frannie Kelly welcome another of rap’s realest figures on the latest episode of Microphone Check. Fresh off the release of his Shadow of a Doubt album, Freddie Gibbs talks about the beauty of independent rap, drawing inspiration from Rick James and George Clinton, battling lean addiction and how fatherhood has changed him. In an especially candid moment, Gangsta Gibbs gets real about the morality of the drug game.

Just being in that position, it was gut-wrenching at times. It was times like, I don’t want to sell heroin or crack. Being a direct effect on somebody’s family life crumbling, that takes a toll on your mind, if you got a conscience. If you just heartless out here, then it don’t matter to you. But you selling heroin to somebody’s mother that got four kids or something like that. And those kids aren’t eating because of you. And I’m like, “Damn.”

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Related: Album Stream: Freddie Gibbs ‘Shadow of a Doubt’