I was raised by my grandmother. She instilled everything into me. She taught me right from wrong from day one. I remembered everyday, being 4 or 5 years old, and walking to school, she would be like, Raise your right hand and stay on the right side of the street and make sure you do the right thing in school.

Just speak yourself into existence. Whatever you want, speak it. You can see it.

I take my spoken-word stuff extremely seriously because I feel like that's true writing, true lyricism.

We are already expected to be the goodie two shoes. I went through that during my junior high schools where I wasn't allowed to watch television. I wasn't allowed to listen to the radio.

You have to be vigorous. That's the only way you are going to get it because everybody has dreams and everybody has goals, but the only people who achieve them are the ones that go after it and don't take no for an answer.

Having children obviously changes your priorities, but when you start to see life through these innocent eyes and seeing everything for the first time, you appreciate the small things.

It's fun having songs about parties and gigolos, but I really wanted to use my music as a form of art. Art is supposed to spark conversation and make people think, and I wanted to do that with this song