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.

I tour more than I need to, more than is good for you. But it's my favorite part of music. I much prefer it to studio work.

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.

I don't mind being criticized. I enjoy being criticized personally, not by rumor.

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.

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

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.