It's like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of s-- is that, but white people's s--?

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

When kids don't learn about their own heritage in school, they just don't care about school... But you won't see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.

I can tell. I'm gifted with that, you know. When I hear that the tempo is slightly off, it's hard for me.

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.

Maybe you play a melody twice. You play it once like you like it, and some parts that you don't like you can just switch. An eight-bar motive - you can just take it and put it in the front or back or something like that. It can save you 50 or 60 or 70,000 dollars, a drum machine. That's why everybody uses it.

When we edit the music, I always remember, "It's my band. Save me a place to play."