"To make music is like a puzzle, you're putting little pieces together constantly," Pitbull told AOL Music during a taping of an exclusive 16 Bars freestyle segment in our New York studios. "You may go in the studio and a part of the verse or a part of the hook ... you go back and just freestyle it because it just sounded better -- it felt better." Pitbull went with what felt good in our studio and after chowing down on some McDonald's, the emcee stepped up to the microphone and laid down his freestyle with ease.
"A lot of people get freestyling messed up and they say, 'You gotta come through and go off the top of your head,'" he said. "And I say, 'Naw, these things just been in my head.'"
After the performance, Pitbull set the record straight. Like many artists, the rapper isn't too keen on labels. "I'm not a Latin rapper," he said. "I'm just a rapper that happens to be Latin." The rapper admits that the labeling and categorizing can be limited to an artist that likes to ride both lanes.
"If I go to an award show on the Spanish side, they say I'm too English. If I go to an award show on the English side, they say I'm to Spanish," Pitbull said. "Like me having a No. 1 record on the Spanish charts last year for 17 weeks and not get nominated or get an award for anything, I asked myself how could this happen. They say 'Your album's not 51 percent Spanish.'"Hopefully Pitbull's latest project, 'The Boatlift,' which the usual intoxicating reggaeton tracks and club bangers, won't cause as much confusion.
Check out Pitbull's performance and interview after the jump.
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