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 happens is we're all gonna return to dirt, so at the end of the day we're all equal.

Me and my father went through a war period where we wasn't talking. He wanted me to go to theology school - I didn't want to go. I wanted to do music. I told him I was a minister through music.

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?

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.

The reason why we're warriors is that we rise to the occasion; anyone that's felt like the system put them down, and then they rose to the occasion, they're a warrior. It's not about whether you come from the hood or you come from the suburbs, you know what I mean? It's about reality and life.

I've known Clinton for probably the last year that he was in office and stuff. The vibe that I always got from Clinton was, you-know, he never gave me a president-vibe.