I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the "black people's CNN." Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect.

I think art can really serve to inspire a movement - and, of course, it has in the past. The Civil Rights movement wouldn't have the same resonance without the songs from everyone from Pete Seeger to Odetta to James Brown.

I have offered myself to the inkwell of the wordsmith that I might be shaped into new terms of being.

I keep trying to forget, but I must remember. And gather the scattered continents of a self, once whole. Before they plant flags and boundary my destiny. Push down the watered mountains that blemish this soiled soul before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me. I'll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me. A vaccination for a lesser god's bleak history.

I spend my time sitting in train stations, parks, parking lots, cafes, just looking at people - eavesdropping, basically. I'm vulnerable to all of it.

There is a lot of fun to be had when you try and fit as many words as you can within a three-minute song, but there is also a lot of fun in trying to get that message across in three words, or better yet when the music can overpower the words and convey something really pure and perfect that affects our psycho-emotional space.

I think that the heart is a lot like those wonderful fruit, like coconut and mangoes, you know, you have to break the skin, you have to break it open to get to the good part.