If you go get a passport, it might encourage you to at least consider the world around you.

As a late teenager, the punk movement pushed me further. In particular, the Clash, which happened to leak through the time of disco, showed me that there was this cross-cultural sound that could cut across genres and audiences. Like punk was to disco, rap music was a rebellion against R&B, which had adopted disco and made it worse.

You should be a person inside the world with knowledge of your terrain. And if you lock yourself into the 2,000-by-3,000-square-mile, lower-48 box of the United States, you're going to be frustrated by its limitations. You gotta think outside the box.

If you want to speak about different ethnicities and diversity, rap and hip-hop are all over the planet. Every country, from Turkey to Australia, now has tons of hip-hop artists. The music and artistry have moved way faster than the corporatization of the music. You do need organization and opportunity for these artists to express themselves, and I don't think it has to come from a corporate co-signing.

No matter what's in your head, you go up into any hospital, up to a terminal ward and it'll smack you right back into reality that, "Hey man, whatever you're dealing with, if it's heavy on your heart and head, you're gonna have to let that go, because there, some people are dealing with unavoidable situations that they can't let go." And then they eventually let those go, so, I mean, that's helpful.

If you want to be an artist, truly try to write what you believe, and if you write when you don't believe then you should try to become an actor.

I let go usually by talking to many people in different areas, in different realms of life that make me look at what I'm dealing with as being small fries stuff, you know?