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.

My parents were really strict about me not watching cartoons.

Part of me would just like to relax and have one job that pays me the amount I need to survive. And another part of me wants the creativity that comes out of struggle and frustration and fear. It's a never-ending cycle, which must be how I want it, on some level.

During the 2008 election, I made clear to the Obama campaign that I don't think it's wise for me to force my personal political agenda on anyone.

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.

I think all of this—The Roots and DJing included—was meant to prepare me for The Tonight Show.

How do you plan a rebirth? I'm not sure you do. You just stand in the darkness until you can't endure it any long, and then you move forward until you're standing in the light.