I'm trying to get low. People's personalities can get in the way of their own work.

I'm really quite bipolar, and the depressed times, when everything felt like night, sometimes you get to such a low point that you physically beat at it until it bleeds - as you would say - bleeds till sunshine. You get to a point where you say, 'I will not take it anymore! I'm gonna do something drastic if I stay this depressed. I've got to break out of there!'

I like to read the 'Financial Times' when I'm traveling. 'Economist.' 'Ad Busters.'

I'm doing exactly what I was supposed to do. Yeah. I didn't exactly choose this. My own life, if it were up to me, would be very, very quiet. I'd be like a shopkeeper, a book collector, or something like that. I'm not like this. Myself as a performer and an artist is totally different from who I am.

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'm not shy about heated debate or passionate discourse, but when people get crazy or rude, that's a buzz kill. There's got to be a better code of conduct, some basic etiquette.

Restlessness is my nemesis. It's hard to just chill and sit still.