It's easy to have faith when everything is going great. The real test of faith is when you're facing something that only your faith in God will get you through.

There is an educational cliff we are walking over right this very second.

When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.

Osama Bin Laden is not going to come here and destroy America. Our education system is doing that just fine.

One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility'.

Boys want to grow up to be like their male role models. And boys who grow up in homes with absent fathers search the hardest to figure out what it means to be male.

You have to be prepared to think outside the box...Stand back and think about what we could do creativity. We've got to do that to push the field forward.