“I don’t want my kids saying, ‘My dad was a gangster, so I need to be a gangster. I would rather mine say, ‘My dad was a stunna, so I need to be a stunna.”

When you see them be successful, however small, you say to yourself, wow. And everything becomes possible. Never denigrate, to say we will not succeed.

Making it easier for them to count it up, real nigga.

I must have in stock 3000 songs you’ve never heard.

An album is a project with which you have to hit hard.

The best way to use the auto-tune is not to! And that’s what I do: I do not use auto-tune!

I spend more time with Gucci Mane or Birdman than 300, but all this is just family. Who cares about contracts?

It was Kanye West who spoke, and then we met and recorded some songs. After, you know what it is: we all bump like crazy.

You must not worry about leaks or pieces stolen on your computer. Just make songs, you gotta make music, keep stuff out. You may not know rap, but that’s how it works.

I know that everybody listens to me, but only my true fans will go and buy my album.

Use to get fly, but now I get pelican.

I always knew I could rap, and in a sense, I always rapped. And I’ve always behaved like a rapper. But I started to take it seriously when I recorded with the people of Brick when I started to receive some money.

It’s a pretty crazy thing in which I tried to make songs, real songs, not the quick stuff like on tape. A dose of Kendrick Lamar, a dose of J. Cole, because it’s got to be an album that goes in the club.

I never write. Never! I do not even remember if I can write.

If you’re 30, 40 years old, you’re not getting listened to by minors. Like, Jay Z has some of the sickest lyrics ever, but I would never buy his CD, just because of my age and because of his age.

I know I have this image but in reality, if you take all my records, I had to use five or six tracks.

I’m signed to Atlantic through 300 Entertainment Lyor Cohen’s label. That is my only contractual relationship.

New York is a galaxy of adventure at once elegant, exciting and bizarre. It’s a city that moves so fast, it takes energy just to stand still.

As an African American child growing up in the segregated South, I was told, one way or another, almost every day of my life, that I wasn’t as good as a white child.

It’s taken me to be an older guy, an old man, to have an old man’s voice. Because I only liked old men’s voices. As a kid, I didn’t like pip-squeaked singers.

We never know the love of the parent for the child till we become parents.

I feel like the luckiest child in the world because I got to grow up in Ireland. In summer is when you really grow up. During the year, I would go back to the States, and all year long really couldn’t wait to get back to Ardmore.

Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.

Sometimes it’s frustrating if I’m out with the kids and have to deal with the paparazzi. That comes with it though. But it was fun becoming famous. I mean, I even wanted to one of the kids in FAME when I was growing up.

When I was a child actor, I had the fear that I was going to be cast as the tree.