My father was a musician, and I've always loved writing. I grew up in New York City during a time when hip hop music was surrounding you with the hip hop culture, and it felt natural. I was a really huge fan of the music.

My relationship to Brooklyn is probably the relationship that any 40-year-old man has to his hometown, which is that this is where I live, this what I know, yet it's different, it's changed. My fascination with the city has maybe subsided and now it's just where I'm from, where I live.

Any issue and any problem, no matter what height you look at it from, no matter how much you extend past the first fractal, it's still a fractal of something that emanates from within your consciousness - from within the human consciousness. And it'll move on and manifest itself externally, and then those are what we pick up as societal ills. But all these battles we're fighting are internal. For me, it's reconciling hope with dread and trying to cut out some place in my mind where my heart can be protected a little bit.

I couldn't really be a part of high school, because I have a terrible time doing things that I don't want to do. I'm not good at it. It's not even like, I'm a rebel. I'm just bad at it, you know?

The advancement of style is the cornerstone of hip hop. There is no correct or conservative way to make rap music. Rap is and must remain the answer, the alternative, to the conservative approach of making music.

I think you get to a certain point in your life and where you grew up stops reminding you of when you grew up. Everything changes, everything metamorphosizes.

No doubt, there are times when I'm like "We have all gotten really used to saying whatever the f - k we want to say," and it's something that I really take seriously, whatever that may be.