We usually overrecord. Then we boil it down to the cream of the cream.

The Roots want to dip our toes into everything in the arts.

What we were doing was alien in '92. We were less than immediately accepted by our fans and peers.

The first rhymes I wrote, I was 9. It was Kool Moe Dee-style.

I like to say hip-hop was born when I was in my mother's womb.

I think we could really play the Olympics.

The Evolution of Greatness' was an amazing experience, and it's something that we hope to have been a steppingstone for us to come back and not only do more NBA All-Star performances, but do halftime performances at events like the Super Bowl.

We're trying to plug a void and bring what's been missing back to hip-hop.

Commercial success won't come to us from a change in the music. It will gradually be the result of a change in the appetite of the audience.

We are true to our name. We're somewhat beneath the surface, and I think well always be to a certain extent.

When people see that we're signed to Def Jam, the perception has changed.

In a lot of places Jay-Z is considered God, Philly, our hometown being one of them.

What we do every day onstage, there's lights, there's lots of other musicians, there's an audience, there's a microphone and mic stands - layers of the onion we have to kind of hide behind.

‘Rise Up' is very necessary. Point blank.

I'm tryin' to get some acting credibility, get some other work.

The difference between a Black Thought album and a Roots album is the texture, the instrumentation.

I don't know that Dilla was the father of neo-soul as much as he was highly influential in that time when he was doing what he was doing at his best… Dilla's influence transcended genre and it transcended region.

There's a lot of terms we come up with for the music that we're making because we want something that's going to be definitive. Often there is no word to encapsulate the emotion that the music represents.

It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders the day I finally finished both verses for ‘My Shot.'

To me I think leadership is activism. It's giving back to your community, it's investing in oneself, and you know women and children.

Anyone that I've ever worked with, it's not like I just meet you or someone throws us together for the sole purpose of coming up with a song that's gonna be a hit. I have to have some sort of relationship, or we had to have interacted on some other sort of level and that's when it feels most natural.

I'm down to work with anyone as long as it's an organic collaboration.

I definitely enjoy performing on stage with The Roots.

If there's a track that's rhyme friendly, the verse will basically write itself. If the track is less rhyme friendly, you have to put forth a little more effort to get the song out.