I want to be able to tell black people something they don't know, something about our own lives.

One of the most important parts of the civil rights movement that people don't talk about was these mass meetings. It's like "Movement Church." It's a combination of the music of the movement and the church. Those mass meetings are where people got the energy to go on to the next day.

Race is always tossed into the mix. The unspoken idea is always that white people have a right to carry guns and bear arms.

You can't imagine hip-hop without the Black Panthers. Today, hopefully, the movement can be an inspiration to people. These were people who made mistakes but they were trying to change things.

There's a similarity in both being young people who are not about the politics of respectability.

Part of the problem with Occupy Wall Street was that folks were never really clear on what they were fighting for. If you don't know what you're fighting for, how do you know when you've got victory? In some ways, new media makes it easier for people to connect. It's hard, though, because we're much more seduced by the Internet, by big-screen TVs, by cell phones that can do everything.

As the voices beneath the music are talking, you find that the music is just as important as what they're saying. The traditional thing is to lower the music so you can hear the dialogue. We just couldn't do that for that song.