I can hear what I want [people] to play. If you don't hear what you want someone to play, then you can't tell 'em.

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

You could not stop the winds and you could not stop Time. It went on and on, -and on.

I get pretty much all the exercise I need walking down airport concourses carrying bags.

I think it's important that we run that tension between the way things are, in terms of the way we're governed, and the way we sort of become complacent.

I think it's a beautiful thing how Hip Hop is received by the world.

There is no vacation, no experience, no dream home, and no thing outside of God that can bring rest in the essence of who you are. Your soul will be restless until it finds rest in Him.

It takes nine months for a baby to develop, it takes nine months to develop a character.

Mothers work outside the home for many reasons; one of them is almost always because their families need their income to live up to their standards for their children.

I know people think that I always play these characters who are in control and can chop someone's head off with a look.

As you get older, you realize just figuring out how to be nice to the people in your personal sphere is almost more challenging than trying to change the bigger culture.

Give thy mind to books and libraries, and the literature and lore of the ages will give thee the wisdom of sage and seer.