If you're black living in the community and you want to change things, there are going to be things that happen. That's true of anybody. I mean you could use celebrity as a similar metaphor.

If you think about black art, all black art, whether it's Invisible Man or whether it's James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, or Richard Wright, they all deal with elements of identity and trying to humanize our experience and our struggle in the world where people have been indifferent to who we are and what we are. It's basically just saying that our lives have meaning.

I was just really happy to see Barry [Jenkins] and Mahershala [Ali] and everyone else involved with "Moonlight" get their moment.

Harlem is filled with moments of history.

I mean, we should only be talking about the merits of film ["Moonlight"] because one of the great things about the visual language is that it is the great equalizer.

I've just never seen a live event [like Oscar] where the emotional swings - it was just stunning.And it was interesting because, on one hand, "Moonlight" is one of these, like, generational pictures that you wanted to see win. But at the same time, if "La La Land" had won, I completely understood.

The one thing you'll notice when you're walking through Harlem is every single passing car is playing different music and there's also music that's being played out of windows.