When I met Dre, N.W.A. didn't exist, nor did Michel'le. And I think we had a chemistry. When started working on my stuff, we created something that was phenomenal.

It's one of many ways that Barack shows me and the girls how special we are. And that's the thing that touches me about him. I don't care what's on his plate. I don't care what he's struggling with. When he steps off that elevator into our residence he is Barack and dad. And there's just those little things that you do that remind you, that you know, I still got ya.

One of the things that attracted me to Barack was his emotional honesty. Right off the bat he said what he felt. There are no games with him—he is who he appears to be. I feel fortunate as a woman to have a husband who loves me and shows me in every way.

The beatings, the beatings were so normal to me. The abuse was just routine. I didn't wake up the next day and say, 'Dre, why did you hit me?' We never talked about it the next day. Never.

When my mother and my grandmother died three months apart, I knew my world was over.

Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big—big money, big businesses selling weed—after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?

For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.