“We’re all Africans, everyone – black, white, yellow.”

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.

I don’t get jealousy, I don’t get how people hate each other – I never did.

I have no tattoos that I regret – I have had some that I have had changed according to how my life was.

There was a side of me that knew I was gonna change the game, but I didn’t know how many people would respect it.

Life Is Good’ represents the most beautiful, dramatic and heavy moments in my life.

I can’t control what people think. They know who I am.

I definitely have plans to do more collaboration albums in the future.

I wish the music business was a much easier thing, but you know what? Nothing easy is worth anything. So it is what it is.

I never cared for politics before Barack Obama. I never thought it mattered to people like me.

I think I’m that guy. I’m still blessed with the opportunity to make music and pass out a message like, ‘Life is good,’ to the world.

The sound of the ’90s, to me, is a combination of soul and street – it’s a feeling.

No matter how much strong black coffee we drink, almost any after- dinner speech will counteract it.

I like to describe my life as a black hole with a little light out there.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

To be beautiful, woman enough to have a black sweater, black skirt and walk arm in arm with the man she loves.

Chanel is composed of only a few elements, white camellias, quilted bags and Austrian doorman’s jackets, pearls, chains, shoes with black toes. I use these elements like notes to play with.

One is never over-dressed or underdressed with a Little Black Dress.

We all tend to be in the same circles – people like my Wu-Tang brothers, or Black Thought from The Roots.

Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.