The big stars in rap, they were too big, so when my rap generation started, it was about bringing you inside my apartment. It wasn't about being a rap star; it was about anything other than.

Anybody I'm dating, I don't want them to talk about my music. I don't talk about my music to them.

There's not one person in the world that's not a living, walking contradiction.

I've gone through too much, from beefs to divorce to my mom passing which I always expressed in my music, so there's not album that sticks out as more important than the other to me.

Hip-hop is the streets. Hip-hop is a couple of elements that it comes from back in the days... that feel of music with urgency that speaks to you. It speaks to your livelihood and it's not compromised. It's blunt. It's raw, straight off the street - from the beat to the voice to the words.

When I made Illmatic, I was trying to make the perfect album. It comes from the days of Wild Style. I was trying to make you experience my life. I wanted you to look at hip-hop differently. I wanted you to feel that hip-hop was changing and becoming something more real.

I think more people want to be rappers than anything else.