I'm getting my respect as a video director. The fashion industry respects me and knows who I am.

Sometimes I feel like what's hard for fashion designers to do is take looks from off the runway and actually put it into existence, into reality. That's really the hard part.

My real name's Rakim - my parents named me after the god MC himself.

I hate the hype. When 50 Cent came out, people were saying that he was the best rapper alive: "Oh, he got shot nine times, he's better than Tupac, he's better than Biggie." That was all hype.

I want to inspire people to really open up their minds and not be one-sided or biased or hypocritical.

I don't even like New York rappers.

All of the young people - the artsy people, people who get overlooked because they're weird or they don't have hype around them - need to get some shine.