Just days before Ludacris’ new venture, Kid Nation, went live, he ate chili and washed it down with whiskey as expensive as a used Honda Civic. Ordinarily, Ludacris’ lunch wouldn’t be news, but in our video chat, the super star kicked back with some Michter’s Celebration and that got him to thinking about his career.

The podcast showed off Luda’s desire to learn more about good drink and how great bourbon can solve the world’s problems.

Do you have a pretty good collection of spirits?

I wish I had a good collection, I drink all of them. I’m not like you. … I’m not able to buy anything and keep it full. And I’m not like my friends, who drink the shit and then pour some cheap shit in there and then make all their friends act like that’s what it really was when it’s on the mantlepiece. I can’t do it, man, so I’m going to have to build up a tolerance to actually buying stuff and not drinking it.

How have you been handling all the lockdowns and quarantines and Covid?

I wanna just say first and foremost that I have been on the road and been doing shows and putting out albums for over 20 years. … I’m not doing shows right now, I got cut off like everyone else. But luckily, I have been able to kind of venture off from one stream of income to me being able to kind of chill and enjoy the home that I have worked so hard in order to get.

You obviously have a family — I travel a lot, too, and I’ve really enjoyed the time I have had.

I’m a girl dad, and I have a lot of girls. You know, there’s nothing but women in my house. So I for one am so glad I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with them but at the same time I’m glad for friends like you who send me whiskey when there’s only women in my household.

How much has changed in the business and how much have you changed?

Man, I have changed so much and the business has changed so much. I allow myself to mature; I don’t like to hold myself back, I don’t like to hustle backwards, as they like to say. And the industry has changed so much, going from, obviously, cassette tapes to CDs to MP3s, and going through the album phase and then going onto the singles phase and back to albums and now to streaming, social media. It’s good. If you don’t evolve, you’ll evaporate.

You’ve won a lot of awards, but everybody associates you with “Fast and Furious” … Is it more of an accomplishment to be a part of one of the most successful franchises in history or to win a Grammy?

For me, that’s a hard one. I think they’re very, very close, but for winning a Grammy is going to be No. 1 for me, just because when you’re shooting a movie there’s so many different elements. You’ve got the director, you’ve got producers, you’ve got, you know, the writer, you have the actors, so you’re kind of one part of a huge play. When you win a Grammy you’re pretty much just like one of two or three people in the process of making that. … It definitely feels more like, this is something you did.