It's funny, I can see the science in how music is made with other artists, but it's hard for me to dissect my own thing.

Crack offered a lot of money to the inner-city youth who didn't go to college. Which enabled them to become businessmen. I know about maybe five people in the entertainment industry who did their peak work as a result of crack usage.

I do secret stand-up shows around New York. I announce and tweet this to nobody - I get onstage and I do a quick five minutes.

The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.

The president is just the coach of a football team. You need the right support, the right stadium, the right players, the right staff. An excellent coach is not going to win games.

What I'm slowly realizing is that I believe that most of us felt that we could relax a little bit after November 2, 2008, because of the progress and the spirit that it took to get Barack Obama in The White House. And what we didn't realize, is that was really the beginning. That was really the beginning of the struggle and not the end of a struggle, to come from colonial times through slavery, through the Jim Crowe Laws, through the civil rights period to The White House as, like a point A/point B journey. Point B of course being the end.

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.