“In high school, everybody rapped. You just pounded on the table.”

Becoming a father made me a lot more sentimental than I ever was before. I never cried at movies before I became a parent. I feel music more intensely.

A lot of us don’t get a sense of our personal power. I know the vast difference that one person can make in changing things.

Sometimes it takes time to get into what ideas actually mean to you. Even when you’re not writing a song, it’s like that.

What first got me involved in politics was being 14, and a youth organizer comes to my house with a van full of 14 year old girls. “Hey, you want to go to the beach with us? But first we’re going to go support the cannery workers’ strike in Watsonville.”

I wanted to write a song about sexism, but I didn’t want to do it in a mechanical way and be like, “Don’t be sexist!” because that’s not how I talk in regular life.

What I’m trying to do is make music that people relate to, that talks about ideas that are personal but also make that connection to trying to make revolutionary change, and I don’t need to change my music to get to a certain audience.

I wanted to be part of changing the world. I don’t want to just stand by and watch it be however it is.

I was this 5-7 pudgy kid in high school… I wasn’t a popular kid. I was an outcast.