It's not longer 'Look what I can do, I can do it better then you.' It's just I am.

I enjoy mediation. I think the artist's position is often to mend the things we feel are broken. Whether that's between two cultures or two thoughts. We're always trying to reach, trying to expand something.

Hip-hop in Africa has been very often a duplication of an American experience, but in a context that's totally alien to it.

Until the lion learns to speak, the tales of hunting will be weak.

I do think that some of my songs, like Take a Minute, are like the train between the two worlds. It starts out with the question of "how did Gandhi ever withstand the hunger strikes and all / he didn't do it to gain power or money as I recall," and its sweep reaches all the way to this part of the world. I think maybe I'm a translator, because I lived in both worlds and truly understand them. I understand the discontent that comes from not having. But I also understand the anxiety that comes from wealth and convenience.

You have to let the world speak to you and then you speak, you know, so I'm in that moment now where I'm finding the world's voice.

It is the very survival of the streets that makes children pick up guns in Somalia, not some older, wide-eyed rebel leader. My intimate experiences during these years are something which I have shared with people through my music but am very careful about how they are addressed.