My New York, the one I identify with as a kid, has greatly changed. And I'm sure the people who were adults when I was a kid probably felt the same way.

A lot of people thought 'Funcrusher' was super dark and hopeless, and I don't think it was hopeless in any way.

You can always get something cool out of a collaboration - you can always have a moment - but meeting someone that you want to collaborate with continuously, that's a different thing.

With me, I'm going to have a label where no one is ever cheated, ever.

Run The Jewels, me and Mike, and our connection and everything, came out of a period of time where I had personally lost everything.

The thing about hip-hop producers, and the thing about hip-hop musicians, is that we listen to everything. And we're inspired by everything. I'd say even more so than any other genre of music.

I really only put stuff out when I have something to say and I feel like I've got a direction and I've got an idea - and that can even take two, two-and-a-half years to flesh out.

If New York has just become a mall for the world, then what's the difference between being here and somewhere else?

I definitely grew up on Garfield. I just loved his pessimism.

I'm a cat guy. I'm absolutely a cat guy. I grew up with cats.

I would have to be traditional and say that my favorite era of hip-hop was between '85-'89. That was the era that got me to love hip-hop.

The bravest artists I've ever known have always been graf artists. Risking your life and your freedom is no joke.

I believe that experimenting is what production is. But it doesn't mean much if you don't have a solid foundation in what you're experimenting with. You can't really deviate from music unless you know music; it's not gonna work.

I had a year, where... I was secretly, 100 percent, dead broke.

'Meow The Jewels' was a nightmare of a promise I had to fulfill. We made a joke that if the fans gave us $40,000, we would remix our album using nothing but cat sounds.

Atheists are just as obnoxious if not more obnoxious than zealots.

Some of the music I made for 'Fantastic Damage' I thought I was making for the Company Flow album, but the majority of it was post-Company Flow.

Anything that gets to the more emotional and dark side of music, I always enjoy.

I reserve the right to think many different things and to change my mind and to even be wrong.

The thing I love about music is, if you do it long enough, you get better and better at translating what's in your head to a medium. That's why I keep doing it.

Run the Jewels, our role is this: We can provide some music and some swagger in the face of doom and in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

I like Das Racist, and so should you.

I work on a musician's week, so Monday is Friday. By the time Thursday rolls around, you stay in, and you work, and you don't go out because it's horrible.

The last Company Flow reunion show in New York City was pretty insane. Everybody knew all the words to every song; everybody had smiles on their faces. Those shows are what you hope for every time you get on the stage.

There are two types of people, two types of performers: Performers who know how to keep a show going, literally, when the power is gone and performers who haven't had that much experience and will panic and freak out and don't know what to do.

I just don't believe in making music about making music anymore.

I don't believe in collaboration necessarily for collaboration's sake, but I will do it, and sometimes it's great.

I've fallen on my face. I've made mistakes. I've got plenty of records where I listen back, and I think, 'I wouldn't've done that.'

I used to think that growing up in New York made me ready for everything - for everything. Before I really got a chance to travel, I thought that I was better prepared for the world because I was from New York.

You don't know what it feels like to have someone go to bat for you until you really need it, and they do.

I remember listening to 'Low End Theory': I had been kicked out of high school. I was in GED school in the LES, and all I could do was listen to 'Low End Theory.' I was in a strange time in my life, and 'Low End Theory' kind of defined that time.

I guess there are a lot of writers out there who get really inspired when they're depressed. I can't write about being depressed until I'm happy. That's all there is to it. I need space.

For me, the idea of releasing a free record is powerful if everybody gets it for free at the same time.

I'm not that prolific in terms of making my own music.

I really don't believe in going too far out of your way to hunt down somebody to do a song.

I probably started trying to make beats at around 12.

I always liked the idea that you can put something in you onto a canvas or a piece of paper and have it exist there and not inside you. It's a way to control things.

All I ever wanted to do, personally, was bring something new to what I loved: the thing that I loved the most, the music that I loved the most.

Standing up for what you believe is right, as well as standing up for what you believe is funny, standing up for what you believe is cool. As we found each other and the music that we do, we get to live out all of those things. That's what Run The Jewels is: it's all of those aspects of our personality.

Music can feel empowering, or it can give a natural emotional voice to something people can't express. This is why it's beautiful.

I'm of the generation that discovered Aerosmith because of Run-DMC. They just looked crazy to me. They were the dudes in the Run-DMC video. That's who Aerosmith was.

Being stupid and compassionate are not conflicts. Being mean and being funny and having something to say are not a conflict.

There's always stuff to rebel against.

You've got to recognize it when it's time to go.

Labels are curators of taste, and the best ones know how to monetize what an artist is trying to do.

I think that people have been claiming hip-hop as being dead since the moment it started.

Just because I run an indie label doesn't mean I don't think Jay-Z is nice.

I really am not interested in making political music per se. I'm making personal records, but at the same time, I'm very much aware of my surroundings. And those surroundings, what's going on in the larger picture, affects my everyday life and affects the way that I think.