I'd been working since I was eleven so I could buy my own comic books. I was that kid knocking on your door, selling subscriptions to the paper and crying because I wasn't going to sell that last paper that would allow me to go to Disneyland.

If you tell a story that's only allegory, then it doesn't help you at all. If it doesn't bring some emotional charge, then it's just talking about something.

Making movies seemed so impossible as far as getting my ideas funded.

The things you have to do to be effective - like forming a union at a fast food joint or a telemarketing company - aren't going to work unless you do things like solidarity strikes. Solidarity strikes are illegal. They've been illegal since the '40s, and they were made illegal because they work.

I've always been about, how do I get my ideas out to the most people?

That existential crisis is something you rarely see portrayed by black characters; the idea that people think about their own existence and that they have hopes and dreams is taken away from people of color in their representation.

The crux of our power isn't only in our voice. It is in our economic function in society.

I think most people would love for us to be a socialist society.

There's this zeitgeist happening, and people are more open to 'Sorry to Bother You' being a hit with 'Get Out' being out there. But that zeitgeist is also happening because of the movements going back to Occupy and Black Lives Matter. Usually, film is years behind. It just so happens that, this time, everything is lining up.

The opportunism of electoral politics makes people lie to each other.

You can't get much done by yourself. Speaking as someone who made a movie - and it took hundreds of people to make it happen - I can say that.

We all - even at a base level, even a Republican - understand that the people with the money are the ones with the power. We all learn that.

With a movie, you have the power of putting out an idea about the world and for people to take it seriously.

Trying to get somebody to read your script and you're a musician? That's the last person whose script you're gonna read!

I have a problem with superheroes in general because, politically, superheroes are cops. Superheroes work with the government to uphold the law. And who do the laws work for?

When people listen to Jay-Z, they're working all day or trying to work and pay their bills, and what they hear is someone who's free. Who doesn't have to worry about the electricity. But all we're taught is that those who are rich deserve to be rich because they worked harder than the rest of us, or they're smarter.

The truth is, every movie is a message movie. It's just that most movies have messages that are in lock step with the status quo.

Any collective action is made up of individuals who one day decided not to sit and watch anymore.

I used to get worried about writing a love song, because everyone else is doing them, and there are already enough of them out there. But I came to realize that there's a reason for that: Love is powerful, one of the most powerful emotions there is.

I thought my parents were always having card parties - and they were - but they were actually also having meetings to organize people. My older sister would be part of youth organizing, and she'd have dance parties. People would be dancing and talking about how to improve their neighborhood.

The Box would not play 'Takin' These' because we had a scene where we were taking furniture out of Rockefeller's mansion and giving the stuff out on the street for free.

There are a lot of leaders that talk about ending things like oppression - whether it's discrimination or getting a job - but the reason for all of this stuff is somebody's making a profit off our backs. That's the reason why black people were brought here in the first place. It was a profit motive.

'Redistributing the wealth' - that phrase gets used so much that you almost get numb to it.

What I wanted to do is put forth, musically, the idea that there's hope that we can change the system.