Michael Bloomberg is a sensible guy. He's just privileged. He's a goddamn billionaire, and he or his family members have never had to deal with anything as remotely degrading as stop and frisk. So he has no point of reference.

My fans like to be romantic. I feel like I'm creating at least at the same level or even a higher level of creativity than I was at twenty-one. I've gotten better as an artist.

So I just had to step up how I was doing it and the moment that I stepped up and the moment I focused all my energy on that is when things started to happen. So there's a direct relationship between my inspiration and my output.

What is Norah Jones' style? Is it just the albums that we've heard? She has a rock group where she plays guitar in, downtown in New York, so do we really know her style?

But you have to be creative on how you sell yourself and market yourself.

So I think hip-hop is moving and is going to continue to move in the direction of rappers just being honest with themselves, whether you're talking about Common and Mos Def or Nas and 50 cent.

I don’t think that early hip hop stood out to be a social critique. A lot of fans of mine think that hip hop’s ultimate responsibility is to critique social structures.