We have to remember that the experience of gangsta rap as such in its foundation is an anti-systemic experience primarily. And it is an anti-systemic experience that is not in some cases politicized, but in general results in a much more transgressive, much more uncomfortable music for the structures of power, than conscious rap or political rap.

If I stop today at a protest and I read a speech, it is a speech that remains in that moment, and whoever captures it does, and whoever doesn't, doesn't, and just keeps walking. It is very sterile, and it can seem even inaccessible and boring for a community.

It is not like the white Republican, the conservative, who clears it up for you and says, "I don't like you", to your face and then you know immediately he is an antagonist. Racism operates in a lot of ways, and so I live it every day.

I think in terms of the themes that I have worked on most is establishing questions of race in the context of Latin America. This is a theme that makes uncomfortable a lot of people, and it obviously makes the Latin American Left uncomfortable.

It isn't like we don't work with you because you are white, or not want anything to do with you. It is more like you have to check your privileges, the whites have the responsibility to put themselves at attention with the form they operate in with people of color and try to always lay out that pattern to connect with people and say, "I am conscious of my privileges and I am accounting for myself."

The Latin American Left, the criollos, direct descendents of Spaniards, they don't want to accept that they are the whites of Latin America. They don't want to talk about race. The discussion for them is based on class struggle, rich against poor, but doesn't offer the possibility of a dialogue about racial questions.

I believe a lot in gangsta rap, I see in it a lot of positive things as it is. I believe it is only about doing politicization work. Revolutionary change will come from there, it won't come from conscious rap.