I'm a New York person. I've never gone out of the way to speak to the press to change my persona - I probably should have. It's too late now. But when I first started I was like, "I'm gonna stay this way. I'm gonna be this way," and I continued to. I probably should have sugarcoated it like, "This is not really the way I am - I'm an actor."

Being a good rapper is hard to do. I'm a good Rapaport, but that's about it.

Positive doesn't mean unflawed: It means human and vulnerable. If you make a film and you're portraying the subject with respect, you're gonna do it in an honest way.

A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you've been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man - promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it's going to be okay.

The effect hip-hop had on me was enormous. I was exposed to it by happenstance. My father worked at a radio station in New York called WKTU Disco 92. It was the first radio station in New York City to play disco in the late '70s.

My favorite part is just being able to say and do things that you can't do in real life, and behaving in a way that's just not really acceptable, in the real world.

Right now I'm taking a break from hip-hop documentaries. But I would do it if things lined up.