Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.

I was trying to write a straightforward book of sociological analysis, or at least cultural criticism, and I failed.

I do believe that it is quite necessary for us as a people to reach back, over and down to help the less fortunate of our number.

There are things that you can do on an individual level, even as you continue to fight oppression systemically, that make things a little bit better for an identifiable group.

I think that the over-incarceration of black and brown folk is one of the great crimes of American society.

The issue of redistribution of resources and wealth needs to resolved systemically, but in the meantime but there are individual spots you can occupy. There are things that you can do on a daily basis that will make a difference in moving the needle in individual lives. When we look at the mentoring of young black kids, for instance, the number-one mentor group is white women. I think after that maybe it's black women, and then white men, and then black men. We can make all kinds of arguments about that.

I was very struck when Min. Farrakhan said if Jesus and Muhammad were here today, they'd be embracing each other. That's a tremendous message that needs to be heard more broadly.