Gray: I was in Germany, and I was talking to a friend of mine about something I had done that day. We started laughing and he said, "You're all id." It wasn't like any kind of flip that I switched. That's kind of what the music's about. Music is very automatic. It's very right there; you either love it or you don't. Music itself is kind of an id, 'cause it can be completely untamed, completely raw.

MTV: It sounds like you totally let loose in the studio this time. But at the same time you took more control.

Gray: Me and Daryle Swann produced it together [before executive producer Rick Rubin came in]. It's just a much truer expression of me and where I'm coming from. I didn't really have someone telling me what to do.

MTV: In certain places this album is more sophisticated than On How Life Is. But in other spots it's also a lot funkier. What's that a result of?

Gray: Just 'cause I'm feeling funkier and freer. We didn't have any limits this time. We just did our thing.

MTV: Coming off all the success of On How Life Is, was it a little daunting making this record?

Gray: Not really, 'cause I was so excited to start my next album. I had all these ideas in my head and I had this vision of what I wanted to do next. I was really excited to go in there and do it.

MTV: What was that vision?

Gray: I just wanted it to be bigger. Not sales-wise; I just pictured this big monster. I wanted that to be my album.

MTV: Sounds like you and Daryle were working with a ton of material. Why do you think it was such a prolific time for you?

Gray: A lot has happened to me in the past couple of years and I had other things to talk about, which is a blessing. I had traveled the world, so I heard a lot of different types of music. You go to France, and African rhythms are really big. You go to Germany, and you've got German hip-hop. Then you go to the clubs, and they've got all kinds of techno and drum'n'bass and jungle music. They have it in the States, but in Europe it's much bigger and much more mainstream. All of that crept into my subconscious and when I made this album, a lot of that ended up on [it]. [RealVideo]

MTV: What aspects specifically?

Gray: It wasn't anything that I forced. It was just around me. There's a lot of real wild beats on the album. Any time you travel, you go and do your thing during the day, and then the first thing you do at night is go out, go to clubs, check out the nightlife. I've got this song called "Sexual Revolution" and it's just straight disco. Then I've got "Relating to a Psychopath" and [it's] a rock beat mixed with a techno beat mixed with a hip-hop beat and a [Caribbean] bassline. It's the first thing you hear on the album, and the mix is over the top. It's wild. It kind of sets up the album, so you hear that and you think anything can happen. You don't know what to expect.

MTV: What's the first lyric again?

Gray: "Hot like hot wings with hot chocolate in hell." That's as hot as you can get.

MTV: What are you referring to?

Gray: The weather. Again, that was from me traveling the world and traveling to places like Israel [where] it's just hot and there's no savior. There's no breeze coming your way. Then you go to places like Norway and it's just cold like in [singing] "My isolation cell in the winter while kissing Mr. Freeze." It's one extreme to the other, but it's all in the same world. You dig?