When you live your life through records, the records are a record of your life.

I don't think crack happened by accident. I'm part conspiracy theorist, because you can't develop something that dangerous and have it not be planned.

I have a lot of those 'Forrest Gump,' I-was-there moments.

Music has the power to stop time. But music also keeps time.

Every time a new record started, people exhaled with pleasure, or their bodies moved automatically. I really started getting high off of the euphoric exclamations. Every record I put on was like a baptism.

I was born at a very crucial time. I consider 1968 to be the Mason Dixon line between pre- and post-civil rights generation ideas, whereas a lot of people born before '68 they kind of went into that Moses mentality. Like, I'm not going to make it, you know, I don't have any hope.

Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.