Who Does Joel Madden Think He Is?

People usually draw a self-portrait, Joel. You just wrote a bunch of words and letters.
I’m a terrible artist. I can’t draw. I’m not very creative.

OK, we get the idea. So what did you write down?
I wrote out all the things that make me up. My initials; my band Good Charlotte; my ­clothing company; my production team; where I’m from originally—Maryland, Virginia, D.C.—my two crews, Black Wall Street and AMC. And I wrote, “I love my mom,” because I’m a mama’s boy.

How does a white punk from Maryland have a crew called Black Wall Street?
One of my best friends is the Game, a rapper, and that’s his crew. I’m an honorary member. I’m his son’s godfather. We live on the same street, we borrow each other’s cars. He has huge pool parties every other weekend. There’s valet parking, and it’s just an insane scene.

He was in the Bloods, and he sold drugs in Compton. What do you two have in common?
We have the same frame of mind. I always knew music was an opportunity to get out of a small town, make money, have a better life and take care of my mom. That’s why I related to hip-hop, because that’s what they rap about: opportunity.

Talk us through your worst haircut.
My high-school-graduation picture is pretty bad. I was into Green Day and Rancid, and I cut my hair real short and dyed it green and blue. I wasn’t going to graduate, and my mom was crying, so I went to night school with all the pregnant girls, to get my credits. I bleached my hair to look presentable for graduation, and it turned out orange.

So you really are a mama’s boy.
When I go home, she does my laundry and cooks for me. I call her every day. When I was out on the road and partying and stuff, my mom never knew. She’d read things sometimes and be like, “That’s not true!” And I’d be like, “Yeah, I don’t know why they wrote that, Mom. That’s not true.”

But it was true.
Yeah, sometimes.

If you were a woman, who would you want to be?
I’d probably want to be Oprah. Actually, no, Angelina Jolie. She gets to do whatever she wants.

What medication are you on?
Just coffee and cigarettes.

You know cigarettes are bad for you, right?
Whatever. Heroin would be worse, wouldn’t it? I’ll stick with the cigarettes.

So the way you rationalize it is—
I could be doing heroin. I really could! Like, without cigarettes, I would be doing heroin, probably. On a daily basis.

What’s the one question you’re most tired of being asked?
People have this misconception that I’m followed all the time by paparazzi, which I’m not. The only reason that’s ever been an element of my life is because of the women I’ve dated. In every interview, they ask me, “How do you deal with people invading your privacy?” The paparazzi don’t care about me.

Do you have any nicknames?
This is kind of weird, but my friends call me JoelPac, or Pac. Like Tupac. I don’t usually tell people, because it’s like, “Who does this guy think he is?” Tupac’s my favorite rapper, and I know every word to every song.

How much is a quart of milk, JoelPac?
$2.50? $2.99? $1.98? I don’t look at the prices. When I was growing up, we had food stamps. So now, when I go to the grocery store, I buy everything I want. I buy a quart of ice cream and I don’t even eat it sometimes.

What personal habit do you have that other people find annoying?
I need to have everything in its place—I have OCD. My friends will all be hanging out at my house and they’ll see me cleaning and organizing their shit, straightening it all. And they’re like, “Do you want us to leave?” Then, if they move something, I’ll stare at it while they’re talking to me. It’s really weird and obsessive.

Are you a genius?
No way. [Laughs] I’m a hard worker, that’s about it. There are a lot of geniuses sitting in their parents’ basements right now, playing video games.