With the black male as a teenager, where you're coming from the ghettos and that kind of stuff, you've got to assert yourself, be macho, not let anybody walk over you, so that's where all this unnecessary bullshit comes from - from egos. That's why there are a lot of fights. That's how come the whole thing with rap has been violent. It's because of the male ego.

I grew up on the rough side of the tracks. If you looked like you were soft, you would be fodder for the wolves. I came up in my neighbourhood like, 'I'm just gonna be me,' and all the thugs just said, 'It's OK, he's special.' They knew I had the talent with the rhymes, so they kept me around.

To be honest I'm not going to sell dreams like everybody else does and say, "Sure, it can be changed." I don't want to seem like a pessimist, but nothing's getting better.

You can tell how good a filmmaker is if you can turn the sound down but you can still feel the story.

One thing the music industry has taught me is to manage my expectations.

I like music with soul and passion and the good of humanity. As long as it has those things, I'm all the way in.

It's not just a struggle for blacks to be accepted by whites, but the other way around as well. A lot of people don't see that.