When you listen to an album, it shouldn't feel like, "That's the girl song," "That's the club song." I shouldn't know what you're thinking while you're making the song. I don't want to know what the artist is thinking.

The burden of poverty isn't just that you don't always have the things you need, it's the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you'd do anything to lift that burden.

I get my by any means on, whenever there's a drought get your umbrellas out because that's when I brainstorm.

No matter where you go, you are what you are playa.

As sure as this Earth is turnin, souls burnin / In search of higher learnin, turnin in every direction seeking direction / My moms cryin cause her insides are dyin / Her son tryin her patience, keep her heart racin / A million beats a minute, I know I push you to your limit / But it's this game, love—I'm caught up all in it / They make it so you can't prevent it, never give it / You gotta take it, can't fake it, I keep it authentic

A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.

[T]he truth is you don't need some external demon to take control of you to turn you into a raging, money-obsessed sociopath, you only need to let loose the demons you already have inside of you.