I honestly now know that I'm the physical embodiment of hip-hop on earth. That's my only purpose here on earth is to keep the culture together long enough for it to remain everything that we thought it could be when I was coming up.

I was born in Hip Hop. That's all I ever needed.

No one ever really talks about the punk-rock involvement in hip-hop, which influenced Afrika Bambaata.

You have to be educated to vote.

Before I came out, there was no such thing as a black conciousness movement. Kids on the street didn't know who Malcom X or Martin Luther King was until rap let them know.

Hip-hop is a worldwide culture. We have permeated every urban environment.

There was no hip-hop before Afrika Bambaataa.

Many of us were raised without a father, and the subject of deadbeat dads hits home in a lot of areas. Most of all, doing a song about being a father to your daughter flies straight in the face of the argument that says hip-hop is misogynistic.

I think that Napster is the greatest invention since sliced bread. Napster, to me, is liberation and freedom for artists.

The idea of New Zealanders sounding like Americans is not it. You got to rhyme in your language, your accent.

Violence on the community stops when the soul matures.

I kind of backed into rap music. I thought I was going to do comic books or graphic art.

I find it fascinating how hip hop as a culture mirrors every mythology from the beginning of mythology. The concept of the single mother and child - the Madonna concept. Hip-hoppers were raised in that.

When you know your self-worth, and you read and you ask questions and you study and you travel, you become free.

Hip Hop is an extension of our very being, and so the study of Hip Hop is the study of self-expression leading to the study of one's true self.

Hate is indeed self-destructive, and this is what real Hip Hop must avoid at all cost.

Ask any rapper or singer what artist they are an expert on. What artist are they looking to emulate, and really, what artist is the one person they are an expert on? You see, if you want any kind of longevity, if you want any kind of legacy, you need to know what ancestral line you are from.

The single most important lesson I learned is that black people are the cause of black people's demise.

Educate yourself, because this society is geared to have us hate each other. The longer we hate each other, the more we can't come together as humanity and look at the knuckleheads screwing it up for everybody.

When I was about 15 years old, I began to embark on an MC career but also to study philosophy with an emphasis on theology.

Rap is no longer a pastime; this is a worldwide profession.

Why isn't there any 50-year-old MCs killing it? I'm 46. Am I the only one? I can't wait to get to 50. I'm going to let everybody know it! I'm going to wear a shirt that says 'I'm 50.'

Every generation brings its own presentation of what hip-hop is to them.

Hip-hop is not about crime. Hip-hop is not about being a gangster.