“When I say ‘hip-hop is dead,’ basically, America is dead. There is no political voice. Music is dead.”

I just enjoy life now. I just enjoy every morning I get to wake up.

No matter what the song was about, I had ’em out there.

I think the hip-hop purists are purists through and through. They’re here to criticize all of us. That’s just how it is. We as MC’s criticize each other. That’s the nature of hip-hop.

I’m talking about me being American and growing up in a crazy world and helping to reflect all different sides of life.

It speaks to your livelihood and it’s not compromised. It’s blunt. It’s raw, straight off the street – from the beat to the voice to the words.

I don’t go out unless I’m working. My quality time is when I’m doing nothing.

I like the way hip-hop is now. It’s grown up enough so that it can get involved with politics if it feels like it.

My fun is not doing the easy work. My fun is doing what’s me.

I think I’ve had the longest career of strength, focus, and still being able to sell records.

You don’t know anything about respect; you don’t know anything about being faithful and loyal to your girlfriend.

I want to sound like an instrument. I want my voice and my words to marry the beat.

You can hear, like, you know, Africans and Jamaicans doing it just kind of as, like, a rhythmic, poetic conversation, you know, to a rhythm.

All fatherhood is very important because single mothers shouldn’t have to raise sons or daughters; they need that help.

I’m a big fan of Common. I’m a big fan of Scarface; I’m a big fan of so many people, from Jeezy to… well, there are a lot of people’s music that I respect.

I never stood for any president in my life, never voted, before Barack Obama. It changed my life to vote. It starts there with me.

DJs play a big responsibility of what hip-hop is doing… At the end of the day, it’s up to us to control and to own hip-hop.

All that counts is the truth. Without it you’re basically just juggling people’s daft ideas.

The Way is basically perfect. It doesn’t require perfecting.

Many roads lead to the Path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice.

For ‘Conan,’ I had to eat boiled chicken breast and work out all the time and basically eat like a bird every two hours and stay ripped.

WE HAVE HAD OUR LAST CHANCE. THE PROBLEM NOW IS BASICALLY THEOLOGICAL, AND INVOLVES SPIRITUALITY AND IMPROVEMENT OF human CHARACTER. IT MUST BE OF THE SPIRIT IF WE ARE TO SAVE THE FLESH.

You learn real early to make a film and then duck, and basically that’s how I go about it.

I’ve stopped wanting a home, I think, because I’ve been on tour all my life, basically.

I’m rather secular. I’m basically Jewish. But I think I’m Jewish not because of the Jewish religion at all.