Ask delicately, using euphemisms such as "the incident."
Every person in the room knows it's a reference to the night Oak Cliff rapper Yella Beezy, 27, got caught in a hailstorm of bullets on a Lewisville highway in October, landing in the hospital with three bullet wounds. But for him, it was just a thing.
Like any other.
"That ain't nothing but life," he says. "We're going to shake that off. We're gonna go forward with something else. ... I'm still feeling the same way. Ain't nothing wrong with me."
He's looking into the future. The next moment, the next day, the next show, awards ... all the markers of success in the music industry.
He doesn't dwell.
"I got a different outlook on it. So, regardless, out of everything, whatever you got in your mind, that's how you're going to live," he says, his words picking up steam. "You know what I'm saying? So if you let everything just take you down, you probably ain't going to be around a long time. Me? I just don't take a lot of stuff serious. ...
"I ain't no victim."
He feels good, he says. That's all you need to know about the night he was shot. That, and "I was just praying. Same thing, daily routine."
Bygones.
Yella Beezy, a Dallas native born Deandre Conway, has no illusions about his runaway summer hit, "That's On Me." Or about where he is as opposed to where he wants to be.
"I feel like you gotta work harder while the anticipation there and the fire there," he says calmly. "I don't feel like you supposed to get comfortable so soon because I still got a lot to do. I only got one hit song, far as the world know of, you get what I'm saying? So if I need to get more, I'm gotta keep on keeping it constant. I can't just slack off and have any days off. I'm gonna work when I'm in pain, like when I'm not trying to work.
"You can't ever get too comfortable because that's when stuff starts declining. You get full of yourself. You think you're it. The next person trying to get your position. You don't think they gonna take it? You gotta grind, all day. Nonstop."
Yes, he has a fresh new debut album out with big-time guests called Ain't No Goin' Bacc. He's got some favorite tracks on it, namely "That's Why They Mad" or "Guess What I Did."
He likes the year he's had, is even a little in awe of it. He should be.
He has a smash single that crosses generations and platforms (and charts).
"It's repetitive, it's a song that's real catchy, something that'll stick in your head. I knew it was a good song. It's a difference between being an actual hit and a hit song."
He's had high-profile pieces in music bibles Rolling Stone and Billboard and interviews with TMZ and The Breakfast Club.
"I kinda just treat everything the same so I won't just lose focus. I don't try to put [one outlet] against any other outlet. Just work with the same type of energy."
He performed on the BET Hip Hop Awards, for which he got the call only the night before.
"These ... high-end celebrities got way more clout than I do, so when I get up there, I already know they ain't fixin' to stand up for me," he says of that night. "That kind of made me kind of nervous a little bit when I went out there. And as soon as the song came on and everybody literally stood up, I just gained my confidence back. Like instantly. Like, OK, this is going to be like my normal show then. Yeah."
He opened for Beyonce and Jay-Z for their On The Run II tour stop at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
"I had to own it, like 'This my city. This my show, I gotta take over'."
But his biggest accomplishment this year is even closer to home. It's a son, son. So, watch out, hip-hop. He's found his reason.
"Made me just grind a little better, a little harder, something to be motivated about," he says. "Just different outlook on life now."
His outlook includes his now and future home: Dallas. He carries the city in the cadence of his speech, the melody of his Texas drawl, and in his now-world-famous haircut, the shag. It's on his body, with tattoos of Big Tex and the city's skyline.
"I'm gonna have houses outside of Texas. But Dallas the home. That's where the big house is going to be at," he says. "It's just everything about it. It's like where you comfortable at. Like, you know, this your neck of the woods, this your neighborhood. It ain't no other feeling that I'd rather feel."
And the city carries him, too.
"Dallas is supporting me real good," he says. "They're ready to see somebody from Dallas break through. And with everybody knowing it's me, from not even just music, just from around the way. Like, a lot of people [are] embracing that. Like, 'He's somebody that we can stand behind and don't look crazy standing beside him.'
"It's hard coming out of Dallas. If it wasn't me, I was praying that somebody, like one of my homeboys, opens the door so he can just let us in ... They're seeing it now. I guess you can say it's hope. I'll proudly carry that type of weight on my shoulders."
He'll always return home, he says, but he can't stay long. There's work to do; he's "always strategizing" and "always just trying to think of ways just to keep on elevating." He's got the taste for success.
"I don't have no off days. I had off days years ago," he says. "It's grind mode."
And he wants to say thank you.
"I'm trying to set up a date for Dallas," he says.
So that "incident" is now just a quick scene in a movie, not even worth revisiting and not enough to put him off his city. ("I ain't regular no more, so I just can't be out here hanging like I usually do," he says.) The only thing that scene really affects is his shoulder, for which he's in physical therapy. But that's not the story he wants to be told.
For the real story, he says, "Listen to my music." (It includes his father getting shot and killed when he was 12 and selling drugs to get by.)
"I'm Dallas. I'm me. I'm original. I'm Yella."
He sees a long road ahead of him. Others can sleep while he drives.
To paraphrase a budding star, that's on you.
