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.

A flower that grow in the ghetto know more about survival than the one from fresh meadows.

Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.

I ignored your aura but it grabbed me by the hand, like the moon pulled the tide, and the tide pulled the sand.

Do the math: You never settle for less than the whole if you knew the half.

You gotta get back to your essence, Use your gifts and share your presence, Don't count your dollars 'til you count your blessings.

Life without knowledge is death in disguise.

The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.

If lyrics sold then truth be told/I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z.

I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.

You know, there's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle.

To see a man’s true colors, tell him you’re saving yourself for marriage. To see a woman’s true colors, tell her you’re poor.

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.

She wouldn't ask. Didn't want to know what manner of thing might crawl toward a fire.

Every medicine is vain.

We're frightened of what makes us different.

Am I living in a simulation?

It is criminal to put our servicemen and women in harm's way and to put the lives of so many civilians on the line for the misguided frustrations of the Bush administration.

If I don't deliver a majority mandate in 2019, fire me.

Forgiveness is a scalpel that removes emotional scars.

Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.