I would say that everyone that you see who is successful in the mainstream, at the top of Billboard, who has a Top 40 hit... at some point, unless they're a complete fabrication of the industry with no identity of their own and a carbon copy clone of someone else, they in themselves started out being underground.

Plastic metaphors and carbon copy similes that aren't going to do anything for anybody and it doesn't showcase creativity; it showcases the fact that the soul of the music has been compromised to control the industry.

I've had some confrontations after I got out of prison and I'm proud of the fact that I dealt with them differently.

It doesn't matter what race you are. It doesn't matter what religion you are. I always tell people: If you want to be a part of hip-hop, you just need to have a heart. You need to have the courage to tell the truth.

I work with Kick G.A.M.E., the grassroots artist movement. Not to tell people we have the best union plan in the world, but to show people that if some activists, if some revolutionaries, if some street organizers from the hood can come together and put together a preliminary program to give health care to independent artists.

Write it down and remember that we never gave in, the mind of a child is where the revolution begins, so if the solution has never been to look in yourself, how is it that you expect to find it anywhere else

As much as racism bleeds America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue.