It's a funny word, persistence. It means not giving up, but it also means just passing on through time.

Reagan's neglect of the inner city is responsible for hiphop. Hiphop is created thanks to the conditions that crack set: easy money but a lot of work, the violence involved, the stories it produced. Crack helped birth hiphop.

Just because the laws were changed doesn't mean that the attitudes have changed.

Kurt Cobain represents a very legit, realistic outlook. Before that, in my head, to be a white artist was to be privileged.

I keep moving through time and time keeps moving through me. And through that process, life takes shape. The question is what shape it is. I'm not the first person to ask that question, or to see how absurd it is to think there's a real answer. Maybe life's a circle.

At the end of the day, I don't release any records that I'm not proud to put my name on. I never got to that point.

At 25, my idea of success may have been more vain, like, "I'll be good the day that there's $20 million in my account and I have this particular house and the wife and 2.5 kids." But at 40 - and I know it's kind of silly telling you guys this - but as long as my Metacritic rating stays above 80, that's all I care about.