Hip-hop is so much about character and caricature that people just see you as a character. Very rarely are you flesh and bone to people.

The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.

Hip-hop is an instant gratification, winners and losers circle, and often those who are losing give up after three or four, five years.

When you live your life through records, the records are a record of your life.

Time will tell. Time is always telling. Time never stops telling.

Funk never dies. It is eternal. It just smells a little different from time to time.

How do you plan a rebirth? I'm not sure you do. You just stand in the darkness until you can't endure it any long, and then you move forward until you're standing in the light.

Music has the power to stop time. But music also keeps time.

Just because the laws were changed doesn't mean that the attitudes have changed.

We have to get back to "we." It's important to get back to "we" not just "I."

To be hip-hop is much more than just rapping in the production. It is more in the attitude.

Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air...but only for one second without hope.

Making amends is not only saying the words but also being willing to listen to how your behavior caused another’s pain, and then the really hard part…changing behavior.

People talk about egos as if it were objects.

You try to find things that are challenging and interesting and hopefully it will be the same to the audience.

You can simulate perfection, but it's not the same. Some one can do a copy of Rembrandt, but it's not a Rembrandt. It doesn't have the vibration or the power.

If coming events are said to cast their shadows before, past events cannot fall to leave their impress behind them.

The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed.

I can cry myself to sleep because I'm not as great as Leonard Cohen, but who cares? Maybe you can't be as great as some people, but it's a tragedy when you don't follow your dreams.

A lucky chance is constant in nothing but inconstancy.

Last night I learned how to be a lover of God. To live in this world and call nothing my own.