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."

I'm just an artist and I'm doin' what I like to do.

There's just some dysfunctionalism with artists.

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.

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

I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time. The people who are in charge of what people see or hear are afraid. What you hear on top 40 or what you see on BET or MTV is not a fair representation of what is really going on...

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