Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape now let it fall - HUNGH

I'm inspired by playwrights, novelists, poets: The value of language has been a lifelong passion of mine. I enjoy it. I'm good at it.

It wouldn't be fair to cast aspersions on an entire cultural movement based on the actions of a few. To quote my grandfather, 'One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch.'

Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years, it's a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment, and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name. [But] it's time to expand and move on.

To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.

There was a time when hip-hop was its own musical principle, aside from sampling. Like the entire Wild Style break is instrumental. Kurtis Blow's earliest stuff was studio musicians playing. Whodini had a real clear sound, things like "five minutes of funk," stuff that you could write really beautiful, lush string and horn arrangements around, stuff that was just music.

There are a lot of people who call themselves teachers or leaders, but they're really just propagandists.