“DJs play a big responsibility of what hip-hop is doing… At the end of the day, it’s up to us to control and to own hip-hop.”

Stillmatic’ is the rebirth of ‘Illmatic,’ my first debut album to come out in 1994. ‘Stillmatic’ is me coming full circle in my career and with everything, and just bringing pure hip-hop back.

I don’t have time for the news clippings. I got my own mission.

I love the art world, I love art galleries, I love what it means – I love art.

Hip-hop is really standoffish. It’s really competitive and it’s really about who’s number one all the time. Sometimes it gets out of hand.

When you’re a teenager, you want to meet a lot of girls – you want to get the most girls.

Marley is someone before his time, man. He’s – he’s almost – he’s like a deity, like almost, you know what I mean?

I’m smiling. Those things are really not bad enough to put me in a slump. I’m smiling with the opportunity to wake up every morning.

Hip-hop is bigger than the South; hip-hop is bigger than New York.

When you have a daughter, you want to protect her from the things that I’ve seen out there, you know, the things that’s out there that ain’t good for her. It’s a crazy world we live in.

I think if I heard someone else talking about their life, describing all the problems I’ve had, they’d look like they were through. Done. But there’s something about me.

GaGa is one of my favourites. Her voice is incredible and she’s fearless and she’s ahead of the game. She’s ahead of the entire game, and I admire that.

I’m just little me, an American who wants to see his country do better.

Every time I get in the studio, I feel like I wanna have some fun.

The flaws, the mistakes I make – that’s the real me.

Every generation witnesses atrocities. People in power try to fulfill prophecy.

My earliest memories of rap music was mixed with my earliest memories of reggae music. They were big sounds around the way, heavy bass lines, strong messages, definitely.

I believe it is a big mistake to think that money is the only way to compensate a person for his work.

There are two types of films – one made by the big-time producers, the other is low budget stuff made by some producers who make films for the heck of it, they complete their films for small amounts, sell it at low costs with almost no publicity.

I have had with novel writing, and I have put to bed big chunks of work that just didn’t sustain my interest.

Just because you’re from the minimalist school, it doesn’t mean you can’t go big.

The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.

Whenever a songwriter writes a big hit, then the next 20 songs they write – no matter how bad they are – get recorded.

American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil.

We still don’t understand how the big bang and evolving all the way to the human species and so on. So all of this is going to be a very, very exciting to the new people.