I'm an independent thinker. And I'm not the poster child for any movement. I'm trying to support whatever's right no matter where it is.

I dreamt that I could paint you with words, but there were no colors bright enough, black or white enough, blue or green enough...they didn't mean enough

You've got to validate every day. There are those who just put a stamp on it and say, "This is gonna be a good day and I'm not gonna let anything else make it a bad day."

Hip-hop is rock & roll. What the hell is Wu-Tang but Motorhead?

Make today's solid ground out of yesterday's quicksand.

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.

I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product, not a person, so I've been going by Yasiin since '99. At first it was just for friends and family, but now I'm declaring it openly.