I want to be as healthy as I can be so I can make it past 50; make it past 60 and make it past 70.

Classical music requires an immense amount of concentration, and I don't know if I would've been that committed to that particular life.

In the 2000s, I became an artist. I started preserving and educating. I became more obsessed with making iPod playlists for people.

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.

Meaninglessness takes hold because meaninglessness is addictive.

My theory is that nine times out of ten, if there's a depression, more a social depression than anything, it brings out the best art in black people. The best example is, Reagan and Bush gave us the best years of hiphop.

My first gig was at Radio City Music Hall when I was 13.