Rap is supposed to be about keeping it real and not relinquishing your roots in the community. Without that, it's just posturing. Somebody who claims to speak for the 'hood don't need no private jet.

People are so confused about race and hip-hop that people didn't even consider the Beastie Boys one of the greatest rap groups of all time because they were white.

I tell each artist they have to grow toward a revenue stream.

Today, a young person that doesn't know themselves will totally be sold some other situation. Let's do your avatar. You know? And young people are going out, spending what little they have to try to buy themselves when they don't have themselves, or they feel like they don't have themselves. To me, that's like a damn pimp tragedy.

I don't believe that everybody is out of some kind of cookie cutter, so the thing that protects me is always being level with myself, even to myself.

I was inspired by the classic rock radio of the Seventies. They separated Chuck Berry and the Beatles from the Led Zeppelins and Bostons and Peter Framptons of the time. In many ways, classic rock became bigger than mainstream rock.

Knowledge, wisdom, and understanding don't come out of the microwave. You got to keep moving forward because the evil doesn't sleep.