We talk a lot about Malcom X and Martin Luther King JR, but it's time to be like them, as strong as them. They were mortal men like us and everyone of us can be like them. I don't want to be a role model. I just want to be someone who says, this is who I am, this is what I do. I say what's on my mind.

We probaly in hell already, our dumb asses not knowin, everybody kissin ass to go to heaven aint goin.

The thing that bothers me is that it seems like all the sensitive stuff I write just goes unnoticed . . . the media doesn't get who I am at all. Or maybe they just can't accept it. It doesn't fit into those negative stories they like to write. I'm the kind of guy who is moved by a song like Don McLean's "Vincent," that one about Van Gogh. The lyric on that song is so touching. That's how I want to make my songs feel. Take "Dear Mama" - I aimed that one straight for my homies' heartstrings.

My mother was a woman. A black woman. A single mother. Raising two kids on her own. So she was dark skinned. Had short hair. Got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. So that's why she was a Black Panther.

Many dreams is what we had and plenty wishes.

Never surrender, it's all about the faith you got: don't ever stop, just push it 'till you hit the top and if you drop, at least you know you gave your all to be true to you, that way you can never fall

I'm not perfect. But I'll always be real