It's easy for me to say, "Oh yeah, that's the self-saboteur move that most artists pull whenever they're afraid."

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.

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.

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

Go for it, while you can. I know you have it in you. And I can't promise you'll get everything you want, but I can promise nothing will change if you don't try.

I needed nothing and was needed nowhere. I almost doubted I was alive.

Not greedy of filthy lucre.

Women who say it's not O.K. are [interpreted as] wet blankets or sore losers.

I've got 11 brothers and sisters.

That wouldn't be a first, now would it?" "Jean." "Jean Grey is dead, Agent." "Yeah, that'll last.

You know, you can only lead them from behind.

The Second World War took place not so much because no one won the First, but because the Versailles Treaty did not acknowledge this truth.

Anyone who reads my work will see that there are often difficult relationships between fathers and sons.