“Stillmatic’ is the rebirth of ‘Illmatic,’ my first debut album to come out in 1994. ‘Stillmatic’ is me coming full circle in my career and with everything, and just bringing pure hip-hop back.”

Hip-hop is bigger than the South; hip-hop is bigger than New York.

When you have a daughter, you want to protect her from the things that I’ve seen out there, you know, the things that’s out there that ain’t good for her. It’s a crazy world we live in.

I think if I heard someone else talking about their life, describing all the problems I’ve had, they’d look like they were through. Done. But there’s something about me.

GaGa is one of my favourites. Her voice is incredible and she’s fearless and she’s ahead of the game. She’s ahead of the entire game, and I admire that.

I’m just little me, an American who wants to see his country do better.

Every time I get in the studio, I feel like I wanna have some fun.

The flaws, the mistakes I make – that’s the real me.

Every generation witnesses atrocities. People in power try to fulfill prophecy.

My earliest memories of rap music was mixed with my earliest memories of reggae music. They were big sounds around the way, heavy bass lines, strong messages, definitely.

I had a pretty public divorce. They’re not easy – divorces – and it took me a long time to really get through.

I want to have fun. It’s a beautiful life. You learn, you win, you lose, but you get up.

Whenever I received too much praise, it just didn’t feel right to me – ever.

I’ve been called everything. Gangsta rap. I’ve been called conscious rap. You know, everything. Whoever feels like calling it whatever they want to call it, that’s on them.

Anybody I’m dating, I don’t want them to talk about my music. I don’t talk about my music to them.

I go with the rhythm of it and the words start to come to my mind and those words could be based on things that’s been on my mind for the past year, the past month, the past week, whatever; I write it.

I love PBS! I grew up on it. If I had to say which channels were good, I’d say, you got your PBS, your History Channel, your Discovery.