“People wanted to make products based on our child’s name, and you don’t want anybody trying to benefit off your baby’s name.”

Primarily I see myself as so much more than a rapper. I really believe I am the voice for a lot of people who don’t have that microphone or who can’t rap.

Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who’ve never done anything because if you haven’t been successful, then you don’t know how it feels to lose it all.

Just strengthening that theme that America is a place of opportunity and hoping to inspire people to fulfill those opportunities, and to want more, and to want better, and to see the places we can go. So many people identify with me because of the place that I come from.

If I go into a studio and find my truth of the moment, there are a number of people in the world who can relate to what I’m saying and are going to buy into what I’m doing. Not because it’s the new thing of the moment, but because it’s genuine emotion. Its how I feel. This is how I articulate the world.

I’m just making an observation. They’re crying out for the love that maybe they didn’t get at home, and they got everything.

People really feel like music is free but will pay $6 for water. You can drink water free out of the tap, and it’s good water. But they’re OK paying for it.

By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn’t need pen or paper – my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.

As an artist, you make music. And if you see people who don’t know how to market your music, you get involved in it. Otherwise, what you want to accomplish ‘gets lost in translation’ – no pun intended.

For me, being with Obama or having dinner with Bill Clinton… it’s crazy. It’s mind-blowing, because where I come from is just another world. We were just ignored by politicians – by America in general.

My first album didn’t come out until I was 26.

Hip-hop has done so much for racial relations, and I don’t think it’s given the proper credit. It has changed America immensely.

Do you know how many athletes go broke three years after they stop playing? I want to help them hold on to their money. I mean, I know about budgets.

That’s why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club.

I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.

Blueprint 3′ is made up of songs, but it’s also a commentary on the idea that in order for rap to survive, we have to stretch out the drama.

Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way.

I’m eighteen years behind in my ironing. There’s no use doing it now, it doesn’t fit anybody I know.

I am perfectly happy to compromise and work with anybody. Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians. I’ll work with Martians. If – and the if is critical – they’re willing to cut spending and reduce the debt.

So I helped educate sports, and then the world, that a man living with HIV can play basketball. He’s not going to give it to anybody by playing basketball.

I don’t have to be anybody I’m not.

I don’t know if I practiced more than anybody, but I sure practiced enough. I still wonder if somebody – somewhere – was practicing more than me.

The essence of the conservative message should be we want a dynamic nation where anybody with nothing can achieve anything.

Nobody sees anybody truly, but all through the flaws of their own ego.

There’s no doubt that I do have extremes of mood that are greater than just about anybody else I know.