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 think hip hop is a dance music that's rebellious by nature.

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.

What else is stop and frisk? These neighborhoods are unsafe not because there's not enough cops illegally frisking people. They're not safe because of economic conditions. They're not safe because of all types of things in the government that people like Mike Bloomberg and Ray Kelly should be looking to fix instead of randomly searching kids in the hood. If you go to a college campus and you do stop and frisk, you're going to find a lot of drugs there, too.

People consider Black Star a great album, and I think it's a classic album. But the fact is, both me and Mos Def have made better albums since Black Star.

Fortunately, artists can live off their works, if you're creative at how you do it. If you just depend on the videos and the radio, you're at a loss.

It’s very seductive to focus on what you don’t like as opposed to celebrating all that it is that you do.