I met Mos Def around that time but I didn't hook up with him until I was about 17 or 18.

Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools.

Being called a conscious rapper is quite a compliment. It's a great thing to be. But as an artist, my nature is to not be in a box.

I was always rhyming and doing it for the love before I found out I was gonna have children and when I found out, doing it for the love wasn't enough.

War is not civilized.

I see that happening with hip hop purists now. Where you have an artist like a Kendrick [Lamar] or a Drake, who are really trying different things emotionally, different things musically, and on a mainstream level. And you have underground hip hop fans dissing it, for the simple fact that it's mainstream - not because what they're doing is whack, or what they're doing is not sincere.

Or is it the mind state that's ill, creating crime rates to fill the new prisons the build