It's no accident that most of the great black spokespersons and leaders understood the centrality of self-affirmation, self-respect and self-love.

We live in a world where people are fearful of extremism, but Martin Luther King would say he was always trying to keep the flow of love in place. In that sense, he turned the world on its head.

A philosopher's a lover of wisdom.

I think that when we talk about education I was also blessed to talk with my dear brother Arne Duncan. I had never met him, the secretary of Education. We had a wonderful talk. And I had told him quite explicitly education is a right, it's not a race to the top.

For me, music is in no way ornamental or decorative, it's constitutive of who I am.

Justice is what love looks like in public.

I think that in a certain sense, we're concerned about the same issues. How do you accent the progressive, the prophetic, those things that are critical of all forms of injustice, all forms of bigotry, all forms of dehumanizing other people, and yet still allow for a certain kind of flow, linguistic flow, certain kinds of melodies and harmonies in the samplings that take place?