David Banner issued an update with regards to his highly anticipated album, The God Box, during a newly released interview with DJ Smallz.

“Why the delay in ‘The God Box?’ I think this is one of the best Hip Hop—I know that this is one of the best Hip Hop albums ever,” David Banner says. “I’m proud of myself. I was in the studio with KP and KP told me something, he said, ‘Banner, this is what the world needs.’ He said, ‘But you have a little pressure.’ And I was like, ‘What is that, KP?’ He said, ‘If you make one mistake on this album, it’s just gonna be a dope album, and then people are gonna move on.’ He said, ‘But, bro, if you can carefully craft this’—and that’s one of the reasons I’m trying to make it short. I have so many dope songs and I’m trying to make it 13 tracks. I’m even trying to connect a couple of songs [laughs]. I’ve always spiritually been connected to the number 13. If you take [a] one and a three and put them close together it makes a B and Banner, you know? It’s a lot of stuff going on… [KP] was like, ‘Dawg, if you make one mistake it’s just gon’ be a cool-ass album and all this hard work [will] be for not for the most part.’ So I pushed the album back and [Big] K.R.I.T. actually told me the same thing. He was like, ‘Banner, don’t rush it. You’ll feel when it’s time to drop it.’ I’m [going to] be honest with you, let’s say ‘My Uzi,’ if people would have downloaded 500,000 copies of ‘My Uzi,’ I drop it tomorrow [laughs], but we gotta do people right.”

“We have to raise the consciousness of the people before we can really expect them to support a truly conscious album,” David Banner continues. “I felt like it was my duty to push the album back and just make a little bit more mystery, drop a couple extra singles so people know that it’s quality. Because think about this, bro, people are still buying country music. People still buying Pop. The excuse is always the Internet but if you hold your people down—the album can be on the floor and you won’t pick it up. The comedian Louis C.K., he told his fans, ‘Yo, I know you can download this. But I can’t continue giving you this level of comedy if you keep stealing my property.’ He was like, ‘Just buy it, it ain’t but $5.’ And he made over $2 million, because his people held him down. When are we going to start holding our culture down again?”

David Banner’s interview with DJ Smallz can be viewed below: