My parents met in Kenya. My father is African, is Kenyan. The Kenyan side of my family was involved in the anticolonial movement.

I feel fortunate to have made records during an era where people actually bought music. But I have friends in struggling up-and-coming bands now that will certainly never be able to pay the rent, because music has been devalued.

In our country there's never been a successful progressive struggle that did not have a soundtrack, whether it was the civil rights movement, workers' rights movement, women's rights movement. There's got to be songs at the barricades, and those are the kinds of songs that I try to write.

Music, I think, is best when it honestly explores personal demons, and it stirs around in the silt of the psyche to find out what's really there.

A good song should make you wanna tap your foot and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs. I'm only interested in writing great songs.

Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn’t understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn’t understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.

The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.