Extreme pain to extreme pleasure has been the story of my entire life.

Growing up in bad neighborhoods, you see and experience a lot.

A sickle-cell attack would creep up slowly in my ankles, legs, arms, back, stomach, and chest. Sometimes my lips and tongue turned numb, and I knew I was going into a crisis.

Don't get 'Return of The Mac' confused as a solo album. That was just a mixtape.

In the era we came up in, you had to have your own thing.

When I was locked up, I went through a big personal change with my attitude and spiritual, everything. I went through some major changes locked up.

When you are young and rebellious, you don't want to be in the house. You want to be on the block.

I'm a fan of hip-hop. I'm a fan of rap, so anything new that's happening, I'm hip to it.

With Mobb Deep, we have to agree on things. We have to agree that we want to use that beat or agree on the type of song we want to do.

All I do is music; that's my sport.

I just remember the feeling of being dropped from Island and having our hearts broken. Because we were given a chance to put out an album to the world. We got the chance for people to know who we were. We wanted to make our dreams come true and do hip-hop for a living, but we didn't do it right.

We used to cut out of school and go to Coney Island to record songs almost every day.

The NYPD is just a branch of corruption connected to a giant, corrupt tree called the United States government.

People of all races need to come together to control our government and run a giant comb through it so we can see the filth that comes out.

'Mortal Kombat' was an ill game. I would always be either Reptile or Scorpion. Those dudes were ill. We used to stay up all night playing.

You gotta be careful and just learn from your mistakes.

When we first signed to Loud, we had a 20-song demo. So all of those songs we wanted to put on the album. But we started making new ones, and through process of elimination, we wanted all the new ones. We didn't like the old ones no more.

Mobb Deep's music, we represent poverty. That's what made us. That's who made us. That's who brought us up.

The music is just real powerful when Mobb Deep and Nas work together.

I'm not scared to speak my mind and tell you what it is.

Once I started writing, I realized just how much I really enjoyed it. I was kinda good at it, so I kept at it.

When I was a kid, I used to love to play 'Dig Dug.' It was, like, this little dude, where he digs in the dirt and makes tunnels.

Going to prison actually helped save my life, I believe.

Premier was one of the first producers that we reached out to, and he was like, 'Hell yeah! Let's get to work.' He was showing us love and giving young, new artists a chance.