Pitbull admits his music "isn’t brilliant".
The 31-year-old rapper – whose real name is Armando Pirez – wouldn’t be a fan of his own work if he were younger, but thinks his true "brilliance" will be appreciated in years to come.
He said: "If I was younger, I’d think it was some bulls**t. The music isn’t brilliant.
"Where I come from Miami, it’s a melting pot. I make global music – that’s my genre. I’ll eat that label.
"People don’t understand brilliance until after the fact – which happens with all artists, whether that’s Picasso, Michelangelo, Van Gogh."
Pitbull began dealing drugs when he was just 15 years old, and after giving up a few years later, applied everything he had learned from working on the streets to his music career.
He told Q magazine: "I took the mentality of everything I was doing on the street and applied it to music. It’s hustle. All you’re doing is moving a product.
"It’s almost like the ’48 Laws Of Power’. I never read the whole book, I only read the Cliffs notes, but those 48 laws can either manipulate you to be a really good person or a really bad person. It can teach you to be a snake or a gentleman.
"The guys I looked up to were gentlemen. I took the gentleman route."