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.

Don't speak to fools, they scorn the wisdom of your words.

Speak what I want, I don't care what y'all feel. 'Cause I'm my own master, my Pop told me be your own boss. Keep integrity at every cost.

When I try to sound like the contemporary sound, it never turns out that way.

I talk about Africa and its meaning, being the birthplace of man and all that great history that's been erased and even hidden. I think it's my duty to be proud and to bring about the conversation that allows us to talk about the great history of my people.

God gushed me out his nuts, the devil swallowed me up and I burnt a hole in his guts

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