You know if I see a work that really I am very affected by and inspired by then it makes me want to try things with my work that maybe I hadn't considered trying before and I think that is the biggest complement that you can pay somebody.

It's good to feel excited by the environment you're in.

What Rare [albom] allows me to do is gonna show people other things that I'm capable of 'cause they really haven't heard a lot of things outside of the rap stuff that I do.

I like things that are beaten up, that have lived a little. I like things that are real. I like things that are made out of wood or string. I never feel very responsive to plastic machinery.

I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent.

I've always felt profoundly about what's going on in the world on a daily basis. What I hadn't felt was that I was at a point in my writing career where I could write about these things in songs and do it well.