All the dreams you show up in are not your own.

I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really the radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside.

I think that the more people who speak out, and say things and take stands on positions that will better our community, the better off each and every other individual artist or otherwise, will be.

If you aren't having no fun, die, because you're running a worthless program, far as I'm concerned.

I work hard at it [delivery of lyrics], just like I worked hard at getting my masters degree. It's not just something I sit down and do. You have to learn and keep learning.

Music has the power to make me feel good like nothing else does. It gives me some peace for a while. Takes me back to who I really am.

You see Martin Luther King is dead and Huey Newton is not. And Malcolm X is dead and Bobby Seale is not. And Vernon Jordan was shot. The thing that revolutionaries, or even people who want to claim they're revolutionaries, often forget is that it doesn't make no difference what kind of wardrobe you wear, and if you speak up about Black people doing better you just risked your life.