No matter how far you go, if you can't go back to the essence, you're not sayin' nothin'. The essence for me is hip-hop. But the hip-hop community I came up in isn't a loyal community.

For me, before I go on stage, it all depends. Might be a girl, might be an edible, might be a verse, might be somebody mixing something in my drink without me knowing - hopefully that won't happen tonight.

My first record wasn't even with the Fugees. I was signed to Big Beat Records, so I was signed back in 1989 to the label that the Knocks are on now. You can always tell which generation had the pulse based on how they see things.

I feel that life is short, so we should be disciplined, but at the same time we should have a good time.

No matter how far you go, if you can't go back to the essence, you're not sayin' nothin'. The essence for me is hip-hop. But the hip-hop community I came up in isn't a loyal community.

What I picked up on Michael Jackson - because I study people when I watch them - the way that he counts his rhythm with his feet and his neck at the same time is crazy... so he's hearing multiple things at once. And I don't know anybody who does that.

It's important, when you see darkness, to understand that there's light ahead of that, and I'm the living testimony of that, you dig?