For their latest “Excellent Makers” mini-documentary, New Balance recruited New Orleans rapper Jay Electronica who gave fans a little insight into his musical mind. While the “Excellent Makers” video barely surpasses the minute and a half mark Jay still manages to speak on his musical upbringings, what authenticity means to him, and more.

According to the Roc Nation rapper, growing up in his hometown of New Orleans and seeing various parades helped spark his interest in music.

“I’m from the Magnolia Projects in New Orleans, Louisiana. I grew up going to parades and second lines and seeing marching bands and second line brass bands so I always wanted to learn how to play a horn or something,” Jay Electronica explained in the video documentary posted on Hip Hop-N-More. “At a certain point in high school I got into a marching band, but I had been rapping at that point already. I started off with tape decks, like my grandmother had gospel tapes. My grandmother only played gospel music, only gospel music. That was it…I been rapping since I was ten-years-old, you know what I’m saying? So if I’m 10-years-old rapping from 10-years-old to 34, either I suck really bad and I need to snap out of it or I’m gonna just be really good.”

Jay Electronica, whose musical styling’s have been referred to as authentic by many, gave quite the interesting definition of the word authentic during the documentary

“Authenticity, or to be authentic, means not just being yourself. It’s actually just the desire and the decision made to want to strive to be yourself. The process, to learn who you are, to be that. If it was that easy we would all be being ourselves,” said the rapper.

New Balances "Excellent Makers" mini-documentary does not include any updates on what Jay Electronica has been up to musically.