You can actually take your pain and processes it into some kind of form of art. So I mean, I've easily always been able to do that, but also I've always been able to give myself perspective - or, you know, older people always give you perspective.

Real people do real things. A collective of a whole bunch of people who do things in their own locale, in their own neighborhoods - the sum is bigger than the parts, and the parts will grow.

When music turned into being like candy - what people don't realize is, yes it's candy, but candy has long-term effects if you're just eatin' it as your main meal. And that's a problem, 'cause if you got music that keeps comin' at you, that keeps coming like a piranha, coming and rippin' at your soul, it's like yeah, I'm takin' this in, but there's not much of me left. Then you'll be lookin' for something outside of music to satisfy you, or take you away.

I'd rather have a hundred thousand or a million people saying I'm nuts and I'm crazy for my musical choices and what I've said lyrically, than a million people all raising their hand on the first day.

McDonald's offers a king's ransom to any hip-hop artist who is able to put Big Mac into a song. MTV - and more to the point, Viacom - is succeeding in extending a teenage life to twenty-nine or even thirty-one years old. It is about extending this market and removing any intelligent substance in the music.

My mother went to university, my father didn't. But they are very educated, very wise people. My father went to the military, so he's worldly.

Let the voice be the voice of the voiceless and let it come from the world of rap music to keep the stereotype and the peace at the same time.