via NPR:

Two years ago, the rapper Logic announced he was retiring – right at the point when it seemed like he had it all. There were sold-out tours, hit songs with famous peers and solo, a performance during the Grammys. But there was, he explains, also real life: he became a father.

"Continuing to chase things like number ones, on this hamster wheel that inevitably never stops unless you step off of it consciously," Logic tells A Martínez. "I wanted to be there for his birth. I wanted to be there for his first steps, his first words."

So he did, carving out the time to learn how to parent and be present — he wouldn't have learned from his own, he says — while continuing to work, at his own pace, on various projects. Now, with that new perspective front and center, Logic is back with a new album, Vinyl Days, which also marks another big change: the end of his contract with the foundational hip-hop label Def Jam.

"I would rather have amassed the financial stability that I have, take a U-turn, and make music that maybe isn't so popular and take a quote-unquote 'dive' in my career on purpose," he says, in order, "to go out on a stage happy and proud of what I'm doing."

Listen to and read the full in depth interview with NPR here.