“Racism is taught in the home. We agree on that? Well, it’s very hard to teach racism to a teenager who’s listening to rap music and who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg. It’s hard to say, ‘That guy is less than you.’ The kid is like, ‘I like that guy, he’s cool. How is he less than me?”

If just the presence of Tidal causes other companies to have better pay structure or to pay more attention to it moving forward, then we’ve been successful in one way. So we don’t really view them as competitors. As the tide rises, all the boats rise.

Wherever I go, I bring the culture with me, so that they can understand that it’s attainable. I didn’t do it any other way than through hip-hop.

I’m just going to make the music I love to make, and I’m going to mature with my music.

It’s hilarious a lot of times. You have a conversation with someone, and he’s like, ‘You speak so well!’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean? Do you understand that’s an insult?

Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that’s the foundation for everything great.

I came into this music business at 26 years old. I was a fully developed man at that point. At that age, I didn’t have anything to prove.

I am against discrimination of any kind, but if I make snap judgments, no matter who it’s towards, aren’t I committing the same sin as someone who profiles?

I don’t sit around with my friends and talk about money, ever. On a record, that’s different.

Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama’s running so we all can fly.

People are intermingling, hanging out, having fun, enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It’s worldwide. Everywhere you go, people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that.

New York – I’m connected. This is my core. I feel like if I’m not connected to New York, then I don’t even know what to do with myself.

You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like ‘I still go to the projects.’ I’m like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it’s so cool?

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.

Obama provides hope. Whether he does anything, the hope that he provides for a nation and outside of America is enough. Just being who he is. You’re the first black president. If he speaks on any issue or anything, he should be left alone.

That was the greatest trick in music that people ever pulled off, to convince artists that you can’t be an artist and make money. I think the people that were making the millions said that. It was almost shameful, especially in rock n’ roll.

I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can.

Spirituality does not require that you work hard toward achieving a result in the future as much as it requires you to be fully present.

Deep down we all suspect that something is very wrong with the way we perceive life but we try very, very hard not to notice it. And the way we remain blind to our frightful condition is through an obsessive and pathological denial of being.

I really played a lot this year. Sometimes it’s really hard to stay focused all the time because you’re really tired after the whole season.

Anyone would be up for a little bit of a change. It is so rewarding to do a movie, and so enjoyable. It’s hard work, but really wonderful.

Everything about acting drives me and gives me the need to really try it. It’s an evolution – doing the same thing for 12 years is kind of a chunk.

What they wanted was something newly experienced, and therefore unknown and hard to attain.

And what we now find as very hard, figured stone, was once soft mud and which received the impression of the shape of a shell, as I have frequently demonstrated.

if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.