The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.

You know, there's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle.

When I look at the arc of my career, my focus is on lyricism, right? I own that.

Hip-hop isn't as complex as a woman is.

The problem with our role is Americans live in a world of illusion.

My parents are my biggest influences. My parents and my city. Brooklyn, New York, New York City, the community I grew up. I don't feel like I'm special in that. I feel like that's everybody.

You make knowledge relevant to life and you make it important for children to learn things that will really relate to things going on in their lives, and not abstract.