“I ain’t never been the type of person out at the movies and holding hands and riding around listening to R. Kelly.”

A lot of things come with fame, whether it’s losing friends or losing family. You still gotta stand up and be that guy even when you ain’t having great things. Because you’ve gotta be the spokesperson for your people.

Anything that looks good makes you feel better.

Open your eyes, I’m a BLESSING in disguise.

I used to hit the kitchen lights, cockroaches everywhere. Hit the kitchen lights, now it’s marble floors everywhere.

All my albums always go with the times.

I don’t just do music for the clubs, I do music for the struggle. I do music for everyday niggas, the kids who ain’t got no sense of direction. I’m trying to restore some of the morals back into the game, as far as the street.

Politics isn’t only about government. Politics is about the people.

If I’m gonna put a message out there, I want to make sure I stay consistent. I’m up on my game, because I said it. People take your words and they live by them.

A lot of people question how talented I am. But I’m a real dude and I know real things and I’ve seen real people get their head blown off.

It’s not the average people that come to my show.

Real recognize real, I suppose.

Let’s say your past is your present and your present is your cash, So I look forward to the future.

To be honest, I think about the clubs when I write. But I should probably start thinking about stadiums, because the songs sound even better there – and bigger.

I could sit right here and have a 15-minute conversation with somebody and change their whole life.

Honestly, I’m on the road so much that I never really get a chance to go to baseball games.

Everyday, all day I have to be productive. And when I ain’t productive, I get concerned.

The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music as if for the first time, as if I had never heard it before. Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels, and that’s too bad.

I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it – like, they say “rock”. Because the white singers can’t sound like James Brown, they call him “soul”. They’ve been doing that for years. That’s the prejudice crap.

Always listen for what you can leave out.

If we look at the world around us, we see that we are conditioned to not listen deeply. Because isn’t that what silence is? It’s a listening, a deep wordless listening.

In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness is the source in which all objects arise and subside.

Awakening to the truth is a deep realization of what you are as an experience. What is it that is listening? What is it that is feeling? Feel it. Sense it. Welcome it.

There’s a great space in which this moment takes place. There’s a great silence that is listening to the thoughts.