I spread the message of hope and of unity. That's what gets me up in the morning. I can tell you what is wrong, but I can't tell you how to fix it. I'm a raptivist, not a politician. I deal in hope.

I always remain optimistic. There are three levels of music production: the majors, indies, and what I call "inties," music distributed via the Internet. The Internet is one area that I have used pretty effectively to break free of corporate control.

Public Enemy is the security of the hip-hop party.

The real thing is the heart, you know the heart shouldn't be covered with concrete.

You're always going to sound like yourself, but you can make really strong attempts to keep some similarities, but move away from what you did before for popularity's sake.

I totally hate when somebody takes a classic and desecrates it. I like Jimmy Page and P. Diddy, but what they did to 'Kashmir' was a debacle.

Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.