Hip-hop is about the human condition; it's about people's lives.

If you don't have self-respect, if you don't have dignity, if you don't have some true knowledge of self and who you are, and where you're coming from, then you're absolutely lost.

I put the truth out there, I put the historical facts into Hip Hop to show us how much history repeats itself and that if we truly want to evolve as a human race, we need to stop sticking each other in ridiculous categories.

We still haven't gotten the message; we still don't see that it's bad. And then we copy everything about their [Roman Empire] structure. I mean Paul Bremer was the proconsul of Iraq. We're still using ancient terminology, we still have Senators and we have an Emperor, almost.

I hope one of my fans has one of your kids shot: and blames it on acid, prozac, and slipknot.

Unfortunately, as inspiring as people find Barack Obama, change can be interpreted in so many different ways. I think he might do a great deal of good things for social programs here in America and as well, as much as people want to characterize anybody who's a leader and try and sell that, and market it and characterize them in a good way or a bad way, I think it's very telling about the system that we have when we come to the realization that the war is not going to end.

There is no excuse for a billion dollar industry to have somebody who's pushing papers on an administrative level - which is still very important in terms of getting projects done - it's imbalanced and completely illogical and example of how badly this art form has been rapped... for them niggas to have health care benefits but for themselves to share in no part to that? It's very telling about the climate of the music industry.