Politicians step up and say, "This is what were going to do: we're going to set aside 450 million dollars for a mentorship program for orphaned youth," and so on and so forth, and it sounds great in this romanticized vision of what these alleged leaders are going to do for the alleged meek. But it doesn't examine: why are these kids orphans?

Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the straight-up peak of hip-hop. Straight-up one of the most powerful records ever made, period, in music.

We're kept scrambling so much that we don't have time to really study and analyze and understand the way that power really works in this country.

I'm just wondering if this is the most effective method to bring about change. So I'm more inclined to withhold some of my opinions, and not even be involved in any demonstrations of any sort and just really try to figure out a method that I feel is more potent.

Having my foundation be from two positive black role models in my life, my mom and my dad, two strong-minded intelligent individuals who clearly have made a great deal of great decisions in their lives and put me in a position, via educational institutions, to be around other intelligent people and to have a strong moral foundation, from which I try to never stray far. It all spurred me to carve out my own little niche as a human being.

As far as sometimes being involved with different demonstrations, I did an anti-war protest in San Fran in January, and I'm standing there, amongst all these people, and it's this great thing to see people being active and actually standing up for what they believe in and still letting the government know that there are people who will still sacrifice a portion of their day to stand up for what they care about, but I'm just thinking to myself, "God, man, these protests have been going on throughout I-don't-even-know-how-many years, and here we are again."

You see a briefcase for business, a bookbag for education, a knife and gun for violence. Then there's government, law, media overall, and so on and so forth, just things that we are kept busy by. We're either entertained by them or we're just trying to keep our heads above water by trying to earn enough money at a job so we can afford just any standard of living, let alone the standard that we desire.