Twista

"Besides losing a good friend, I didn't realize who I was after the car accident. I sat there like a vegetable for 2, 3 days straight. On the third day, I looked in the mirror and remembered that my name was Carl Mitchell. Then I started feeling funny like, 'I'm supposed to be doing something in my life; there's something else about me that I'm forgetting.' Finally, in the late afternoon on the third day, I remembered: 'Oh, I'm a rapper and my name is Twista.'"

Sobering, measured words from the world's fastest rapper. Indeed, the 2004 car accident, which claimed the life of his friend and bodyguard Arthur Dixon, shook Twista to his very core. And while un-shy Chi-guy Kanye West immortalized similarly harrowing experiences in his single "Through the Wire," the less-demonstrative Twista settled into introspection: "For a while I didn't even know if I could rap anymore," he recalls. "The accident changed me: it made me realize that life is really precious, and to be grateful for everything I got on a daily basis. And at the same time it made me feel that I was here for a purpose. I saw how demolished the van was, and that the accident was so severe that I lost a close friend in it. For me to be standing there, it was a big blessing."

Ironically, the metaphor of pitted, winding roadway is apropos for Twista's musical career. A mere 18 when he signed his first label deal as Tung Twista in 1991 – "The industry grew me from a boy to a man" – it was not until 1997 that Twista, sans the Tung, dropped his storied major-label debut, Adrenaline Rush. "People don't know what it feels like to be shooting videos, having Gs in both your pockets and everybody knowing who you is, to losing all of that and ending up back in the hood," he cautions. "Between Tung Twista and Rush, you got a whole lot of street Twista. A lot of slangin' and bangin' going on in those days. I did some things I wasn't proud of. But you can only be a child so long before a man comes out of you."

Twista channeled his inner manhood into a guest spot on the single "Po Pimp," alongside Windy City compatriots Do or Die. "I put my whole heart and hunger into that one verse on 'Po Pimp'," Twista stresses. "I was fitting to change the industry, and I think people felt that hunger." His electric delivery ignited his signing with Atlantic and the aforementioned Adrenaline Rush. But the pressures of a debut record were compounded by vestiges of street life; Twista was dodging old drama, furiously scribbling verses while hiding out in different hotel rooms around gang-stricken Chicago.

"Growing up on the west side of Chicago is one of the grimiest places you can be," Twista asserts. "It was nothing but gangbanging. The hardest thing was dealing with how rowdy it was: not getting stuck up, not getting caught in the crossfire of other peoples' beefs, not getting killed. You couldn't walk in the wrong neighborhood; you couldn't have your hat turned a certain way or wear the wrong color. There were a lot of dope fiends, too. I watched my homies, one by one, become dope fiends. That stays with me as one of the biggest hardships."

Meanwhile, Twista's home life offered little solace. The oldest of four children, Twista went to work at an early age to supplement his family's meager public aid income. "I saw a lot as a young kid," he notes quietly. "We came up hard. My stepfather battled drugs. My mother was strict. We moved a lot, but never off the west side. Just from block to block. My brothers and I always had to adapt to guys in different neighborhoods. We couldn't trust nobody."

It was rap music, he maintains, that provided salvation: "If I hadn't discovered rap, I would've definitely been lost to the streets of Chicago. I might not even be here today. Hip-hop excited the fuck out of me. It took me by storm. I was one of the first people in Chicago to get into rap, since everybody else was into house music. I was standing on the corner rapping and beatboxing, and people were walking by like, 'What the fuck is he doing?'"

"At first I thought it was just about rapping, but I came to know it and love it as hip-hop," he continues. "The way they talked, the way they dressed, the b-boy stance, the breakdancing, the turntables. No matter how much you try to study it or give an opinion, there's something deeply rooted within the hood and hip-hop. You can't learn it. You have to live it."

Living it to the fullest, Twista quickly followed up Adrenaline Rush with 1998's slept-on Mostability. Forced to share chart space with a flood of high-profile releases – Jay-Z, OutKast, Lauryn Hill, DMX – Twista questioned his recently galvanized life path. But this rapper has reveled in bucking the odds. In fact, Twista's most obvious commodity – his voice – was at one point his Achilles' heel. "I stuttered till I was about eight years old," he admits. "I couldn't get that shit out. I went from a stuttering child who they thought wouldn't talk so good, to the fastest rapper in the world."

Intent on similar breakthroughs, Twista went indie for 1999's Legit Ballin.' Unfortunately, doubts accompanied the liberation. "Those were the days of not knowing if I was still going to be a rapper," he confesses. "I was into being independent; fighting my record label and being locked into a contract wasn't working out for me. But in the end I realized the man wasn't bigger than the machine."

At a real crossroads, Twista re-energized himself, catalyzed by an initial listening to what would become his biggest single to date, "Slow Jamz." "I hadn't had that feeling since the 'Po Pimp' record," he enthuses. "I listened to the song all the way home, then I listened to it all night in the house, then woke up and listened to it all morning. I knew that was the true Twista style I wanted to get out there." Amidst Kanye's rollicking percussion and Jamie Foxx's soulful falsetto, Twista's irrepressible, irresistible cadence vaulted the rapper from curiosity to bona fide heavy hitter. It also helped him shrug off what'd been lasting reproach: "When I first came out, everybody was trying to call me a gimmick rapper," he chides. "The funny thing was, no matter how many times somebody said it, there was always somebody else trying to rap like me. My style suffered the same criticism that rap did: nobody thought it would last."

Twista silenced the critics with his 2004 release Kamikaze, which – on the strength of "Slow Jamz" and follow-up scorcher "Overnight Celebrity" – moved nearly two million units. With the success, Twista was finally comfortable in his own skin. "I'm really a laid back person, and in some instances even shy," he claims. "And personality is just as important as talent in being a rap star. I used to stress over every line, every lyric, that it had to be perfect. Sometimes it got in the way of my creative process. Right after 'Slow Jamz,' my confidence and swagger were so up, that I started to love the imperfections. That let me capture some natural raw emotion in the moment. I realized my mind and my mouth don't have many limitations."