If you empty, you can be filled up with anything. It could be water or it could be gasoline.

A lot of the post-1977 dancefloor disco sounds had their place at one time, but you can't bring them back unless you bring back a floor.

When somebody greedily comes along and thinks that they gonna snatch everything, and you have so many people that have not, the passion that drives me is trying to make them understand that they have to share. So, my art reflects that; the whole reason I do what I do reflects that.

So, rather than trying to humbly mix with the rest of the world, we are forcing ourselves upon it. We seem to create conflicts with everyone.

It's not about what you get out but what you put into hip hop as a genre.

Americans are not sharp. You can be sharp in your own area, I guess, but in this world you gotta be conscious of everybody else in the world too. You just can't be drunken with constitution and hear, okay we're gonna do this and then you hear well, we're gonna go kill this guy 'cause he's a terrorist and you keep gettin' it.

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.