this is her body this is her blood

Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence.

The music aids the message, it's there to punctuate and abbreviate and shape the silence

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 didn't ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that's exactly what I've gone and done

Art can play a major role. I look at art as an alternative source of energy, the same way we might look at wind or solar or lithium batteries.

We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didnt walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.