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.

Pharoahe Monch is a long time supporter of my music and I'm a long time supporter of his music so when we met each other it was almost like a natural occurrence.I met him before a few years earlier and we were just politicking with each other and we had a conversation about possibly doing something but our schedules have always been in conflict.

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.

There was a lot of rebelliousness, without focus, in my younger years. And even when people ask me, "Oh you went to prison and you went to college for a couple years?" I'm like "Yeah, I learned more in prison than I think I ever learned in college." That's the sad truth.

Since the police department is becoming more and more militarized we're stuck in a position where we're reverting to that sort of behaviour that other places still suffer from because they're kept in that post-colonial state of development indefinitely so we can reap the benefits of taking whatever natural resources they have.

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.

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.