“I’ve always wanted to stay true to myself, and I’ve managed to do that. People have to accept that.”

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.

It was a weird mix of emotions. One day, your best friend could be killed. The day before, you could be celebrating him getting a brand-new bike.

Some people are attracted to vulnerability. From my very first album, I’ve been vulnerable. I’ve always given parts of me, parts of my life – good, bad, ugly. I’ve never put up this image as a super-thug. Also, some people just like the music.

I got love for Damon Dash as I did before. I don’t know if we can be around each other in that way because times have changed. He may be a totally different person.

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.

I love what I do, and when you love what you do, you want to be the best at it.

Religion is like a personal computer. You let people in if you want to… We’re all gods.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.

I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.

You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.

Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.

So after a while, if people won’t accept your excuses, you stop looking for them.

Today, the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers. It used to be [that] it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.

It’s part of the general global hypnotism to accept lies as the new truth.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.