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 want to have fun. It's a beautiful life. You learn, you win, you lose, but you get up.

You a slave to a page in my rhyme book.

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.

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.

New York city is full of great spaces. The best spaces of the world are here. This is the new Europe, where the settlers came and busted out their ideas and put it down so there's nothing but great space in this great city.

"Never stop. Never settle." I believe in this message.