Hip-hop is the last true folk art.

I'm blacked than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle

Hip-hop is the last true folk art.

I don't mind being black. I'm black out loud. It's more than the people that they are, it's the condition that they represent.

That's what I've been trying to strive for - to draw a clear picture, to open up a new dimension.

In the early '90s, when I really started to find my voice, I was reading a lot of books, and I was moved by the writers, like Chinua Achebe, and I wanted to be able to write rhymes that were as potent as what I was reading.

Hip-Hop went from selling crack to smoking it