The folks that are suggesting Occupy move to electoral politics are ignoring history, ignoring what actually creates change. People get involved in electoral politics because they think there is no movement that can create change.

Every progressive movement in U.S. history has been portrayed negatively by the media at the time it happened.

I can run the gamut with beats that no one else would think of. I'm not a trained musician, so I focus on what feels right before I dispatch to writing.

I listen to everything from The Cure and The Clash to Prince and George Clinton.

Music is first for me. How the music makes me feel, it's like energy. It has to match my life. What's happening around me or to me. That's where it comes from.

I'm not trying to make a speech on CD because who wants to buy that?

The album 'Party Music' is a beautiful album, and people need to hear it.

I just look at music as a retreat from organizing. It's like a tug-of-war with me. Music can be effective, but it's not any good if there isn't a grass-roots movement going on to support it.

I grew up around politics. I organized my first campaign when I was 14, a walk-out in my high school to protest the year-round school schedule.

When we were doing shows in the mid-'90s, the audiences were 95% black. What's happened now is the gentrification of hip-hop. A lot of cities passed ordinances that made it hard for black audiences to gather in large groups. Clubs are more open to hip-hop now 'cause it's the same crowd that goes to rock shows.

No one has a copyright on working-class struggles.

You can't co-opt labor issues if you are in the working class.

It's nice to be recognized for what you do, but that doesn't satisfy what I wanted out of this music, which is for people to hear it and get involved in movements and campaigns.

If I wasn't rapping about politics, then I might have been just another person trying to sell albums, and I might have sounded like everyone else out there.

I think that in order to make revolution, you need to make reforms, but you should make these reforms with revolution in mind.

The ultimate credo of capitalism is to exploit people. It's not like this is just an incidental problem; it's inherent in the system.

I want my music to be not only representative of other people's lives but also contributing something to the struggle that people are going through.

I've never really subscribed to the theory that repression breeds rebellion. I don't think that's really true.

My training was with some old British communists who had organized unions in the '60s and '70s. And their philosophy was, if you can't drink a pint with a man, how are you gonna get him to go on strike and risk his life?

I always have thought that part of being involved with life is the same thing as just wanting to kick it with your friends, and being involved with life on a deeper level is wanting to change the situation that you're in.

For me, the association with rock is one of force and anger and aggression. And definitely, in the past, I've made songs that attack like that. But what I usually try to appeal to is peoples' everyday feelings, the things that they're going through as they deal with the system on a one-to-one level.

There are a lot of people out there doing cool work. I went to South Africa with Talib Kweli and the Roots for a couple of weeks. And even a lot of the groups that aren't called 'political' or 'revolutionary' have a lot more to say than what you hear on the singles.

Because of my politics, I don't necessarily think that the independent capitalist is that much better than the multinational capitalist; it's just that the independent capitalist hasn't grown as big yet.

Either I'm really into the organizing, or I'm really into the music. As I've been going, I've been able to figure out ways to even it out a little more.