A lot of what we say and do are regurgitated things that have to do with what we think we're supposed to be saying and doing.

I always write knowing that people will hear it, but also hoping they'll see it. So a lot of times I make lyrical decisions based on what looks better. Also I write based on what I saw for a video. I obsess over lyrics in the hopes that they'll endure in different ways. I'm very precious about it.

A lot of people heard about gin and juice for the first time from Snoop Dogg, but it was nothing new in rap music, and it was nothing new in the black community.

What first got me involved in politics was being 14, and a youth organizer comes to my house with a van full of 14 year old girls. "Hey, you want to go to the beach with us? But first we're going to go support the cannery workers' strike in Watsonville."

All of a sudden it became that hip hop didn't used to be about partying; hip hop used to be about putting out a message.

Death to the pigs is my basic statement.

What the media is playing is what people want is really a false idea. Capitalism and people who control the market have a large hand in everything. It doesn't have anything to do with figuring out what the crowd wants to hear. It has to do with the media deciding what they think people want to hear.