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.

Only a genius can play a fool.

Being No. 1. It's talked about all of the time in hip-hop. 'I'm still No. 1! I'm the best! I'm the greatest of all time!' It's the same mentality in sports.

To be able to play somebody that says and does pretty much whatever he wants is great.

A Tribe Called Quest music was so inclusive, so conscious, it brought such a community together.

Sometimes you know about a job four months in advance. Sometimes you know about a job four days in advance. It's all different, and my thing is just to try to stay prepared. It's like being a boxer. You never know when you're going to get your next fight, so you have to just stay in shape, mentally and physically and creatively.

But it all came, and for me, hip-hop has done more for racial divide and racial sort of bringing together than anything in the last 30 years. Seeing people like Eminem sounding like somebody like Jay-Z and just the racial aspects of it all.