The Internet made the world smaller, so it's easier for people to hear your music. You don't necessarily need a radio record.

My skin is an art gallery right, with paintings and crucifixes hoping to save me from all the dangers in the music business

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.

We're all Africans, everyone - black, white, yellow.

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

When your so focused on what people say, how can your really be focused on the music? If you're concerned with what someone says, you aren't working on a real record. You're working on something that's just for now, to please people this very second... because you don't believe in yourself.

I think hip-hop could help rebuild America, once hip-hoppers own hip-hop... We are our own politicians, our own government, we have something to say. We're warriors. Soldiers.