I mean, I don’t mean to talk shit about Mandy at all, because like, I have a ton of love for her and I always will, but I just think at that time she had a sort of limited conception of what was possible as an artist. We both sort of came up as these “kid” musicians, you know, these “kid artists,” and our sounds really weren’t that different at the beginning, but my way out of that, like, my way of emerging from that was to do all that shit I was doing with Deez and Trick and Z—you know, like, the sort of more progressive, edgier, crazier stuff—and for Mandy that just wasn’t really an option, you know, because like, how was she even gonna hang out with those people in the first place? It was one thing for those guys to be smoking weed and chilling in the studio with a fifteen-year-old BOY, you know, or like, drinking champagne and having all these girls in the jacuzzi with a fifteen-year-old BOY, but like, you can’t do that shit with a GIRL because then you might actually go to JAIL. Like, a fifteen-year-old girl at your house party is just a liability for everybody. And so that kind of meant that Mandy was mostly still hanging out with her Kidz Spot crew, and the same team that was managing her through her first album was managing her through her second album, and so the sound just kind of stayed the same and so did the image. You know, like, every scene in her music videos would still just be her SMILING every time she looked at the camera, and like, dancing on the beach and singing with this fake backup band that she didn’t even play with, and the whole thing just felt like an advertisement for an amusement park or something, you know? Like, that was the vibe she was on. It was like: It’ll be fun for the whole family! And when I’d bring Mandy around to Deez’s house or Trick’s house, it’s not like those guys were mean to her or anything—I mean, they actually really loved Mandy, and they all thought she was next-level talented—but the vibe would definitely change. All of a sudden, it was like I wasn’t their younger brother who they were taking to the strip club for the first time or like, convincing some older girl to hook up with. All of a sudden, it was like: Whoa. There are two CHILDREN at our party. And that was really tough for Mandy to deal with.