I had grown up at a time when people were being lynched, being attacked with water hoses. Becoming active and learning a different way of viewing my life was a healthy reaction to what I was seeing every day.

I think that one of the problems that exists in the United States and in many places in the world is that people don't believe that they can make a difference. So a lot of times we're defeated before we even start. We've become consumers of a world vision, of Kentucky Fried Chicken, of McDonalds.

The US has attacked countries like Grenada, Panama, Libya... the list of victims of US terrorism is almost infinite. And the US government's participation in torture, whether in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile... is well-documented and widely known.

Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.

My fantasy of Cuba was that everybody was going to be going around looking like Fidel, with green uniforms - and it was very different from my vision of how Cuba was going to be.

The attitudes of many police organizations were extremely negative to the prospect of Rap, and many officials weren't afraid to say that they were against it. To them, Rappers were just criminals waiting to get caught.

Being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression, otherwise I would have been free to be so much more.