I've had lots of discussions with my Muslim brothers and sisters who have said to me, "Christianity is a white man's religion" But I'm like, "how is that possible when Christianity went into Africa before it ever went into central Europe?" Even the first people to become a Christian nation were not Romans, they weren't the Byzantines either, they weren't the Greeks... the first people to claim a Christian empire were the Armenians.

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.

Because I know that the early Greeks and Romans and the early Europeans at that age did not see racism as we see it now - because racism was created to justify slavery to build the capital for capitalism - and back in the day they respected talent over race. We had an African Pope in the late 5th century, we had an African Emperor of Rome, and early church Fathers were black.

Maybe we'll stop training our kids to stop looking at someone and automatically seeing them as Black or White or of this religion or that one etc, and instead, as a human being. Maybe we can stop forcing our ideas like, "I don't want them to marry this person because they are of this religion or this color" on them.

I met some brothers out from Canada recently who are real cool people. They make Spanish-language music called Cold Blue and I met then at a Lat-Rap conference and they seem like real good peoples from Central America... and that's what it is. It's just based on mutual respect. So when I meet people like that I'm like, "if y'all going to be real with me, I'm going to be real with y'all" and that's all it takes.

Hold the person that you love closely if they're next to you The one you love, not the person that'll simply have sex with you Appreciate them to the fullest extent, and then beyond 'Cause you never really know what you got, until it's gone

I'm a business man and I'm a grown man. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to restructure my life, support my family with this music... I don't have time to deal with the repercussions of breaking somebody's jaw or breaking their nose.