I think the biggest problem in our country is mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex. From the Rockefeller drug laws to stand your ground to stop and frisk, all these are pointing people, especially and disproportionately black and brown people, towards the criminal-justice system. It's depleting whole generations of people.

I was kind of just too lazy to take my money out of the bank until I saw how Citi Bank responded to Occupy Wall Street.

I listened to a mind joint, and I wanted to do my own version of it, and what you hear on my mixtape is my take on what the whole CD sounds like.

A flower that grow in the ghetto know more about survival than the one from fresh meadows.

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

My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl.

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