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.

Paul Robeson once said that the artist has the responsibility to either help liberate the community or further oppress it. And I think that when Eldridge Cleaver wrote it down it was interpreted as his, but there's a history of people saying things of that nature and meaning it. And what I do is in that tradition, in that mode.

A lot of folks are so busy trying to get their groceries together that they don't have time to do research. I have time. Maybe that's the main difference.

You never cared enough to be Black

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.

Womenfolk raised me and I was full-grown before I knew I came from a broken home

Well the first thing I want to say is mandate, my ass... We've been convinced that 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate. We're all actors in this I suppose.