As entertainers, you're afraid [about] loss of income - but if other people start going to jail for free speech, then we've lost this great thing that America is, and I'd like to keep that.

People tend to think of gentrification in terms of race because it's presented that way, and I think it's presented that way because in poor cities that's what's really going on. Beyond that, I think it's presented that way as a way for the people who are really pushing it to make it just a black problem, so people don't care.

I don't think I'm more politically-based as much as socially-based. My grandmother died on February 29th, and she kept all of my magazine and newspaper scraps, every interview. I've been in the newspapers since I was about 15 - not for rapping, but for real substantive stuff I was doing in the community, organizing around gang violence in the schools. So I had already made my grandma proud before I was on TV. I've always been who I am.

Being an adult, you've already suffered enough from your own mistakes, and the world, to come to this as a humble human being. So it's not like, "I'm going to do the right thing because it advances me," as much as it's like, "I'm going to do the right thing because this puts me closest to the dream I had as a 10-year-old kid."

I'm just seeing as I grow older, and hopefully wiser, that a lot of things I see from a race perspective are class problems too, so I should be advocating for all.

The older I get, the more of an anarchist I become, and I don't mean in a punk rock way.

I like making mini-movies rather than just three-minute, place-the-champagne-here-for-sponsorship videos.