Big L scared me to death. When I heard that on tape, I was scared to death. I was like there's no way I can compete if this is what I gotta compete with.

My earliest memories of rap music was mixed with my earliest memories of reggae music. They were big sounds around the way, heavy bass lines, strong messages, definitely.

Sunlight and seeing something that was a thought become a thing and materialize - that makes me come alive.

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

There needs to be structures in place to do something about misrepresentation about hip hop. When awards are given out and the media talk about hip hop, they're confused because they haven't done their homework on it so you have a case where there's an award for the most pop song in the world and it's called 'hip hop'.

Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined

I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death.