The truth is nobody was a Muslim until Public Enemy came out. Then, everybody was Muslim this and Muslim that. It's a bandwagon thing. Islam is a way of life... it's a religion. It's not just something you put on a record.

Rap is something you live; hip hop is something you do.

The Temple of Hip-Hop makes sure that we don't just approach hip-hop just through music or through rap. We approach the totality of hip-hop.

I have to put a business model together because certain businesses are approaching me as a legend, as if I'm on my way out. Same goes for the way I get presented on the VH1 Hip Hop Honors and BET. I get lifetime achievement awards because of who I am and what I've done, but they want to put me in a place, as if I'm on my way out.

I'm here to inspire young people to be part of the most magnificent culture on earth: hip-hop.

When you seek to do something, if you don't know the whole game plan, you're usually going to work against yourself.

If you vote for evil, you are evil yourself.

Illiteracy causes violence. If you don't have enough words in your vocabulary, you can't even seek your way out of a situation.

The only time you had blacks, whites, and Latinos jamming together was in hip-hop. It's an unsung history.

This is the problem with the United States: there's no leadership. A leader would say, 'Police brutality is an oxymoron. There are no brutal police. The minute you become brutal you're no longer police.' So, what, we're not dealing with police. We're dealing with a federally authorized gang.

Self-management and self-control are the keys to advanced knowledge, and both are difficult to learn without a sense of your own cultural identity.

I came from the heart of the ghetto - there ain't no suburbia in me.

When we say, 'Look, Donald Trump was a friend to hip hop back in the day; so was Bill Clinton,' It doesn't mean that because he was a friend to hip hop back in the day, that the same Bill Clinton wasn't at the lead of this mass incarceration of African Americans today.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Shania Twain. I would always go sing the song 'Honey I'm Home.' I was, like, 12, and I'm singing about coming home from work and PMS and stuff.

A miserable karaoke experience is when people are trying really hard and trying to show off. You have to just be chill - that's what makes karaoke fun.

In my honest opinion, in 'Volumes I' and 'II,' we were still trying to figure out our sound.

It depends on the arrangement. It could take 3 hours, it could take 3 days, it could take a week. 'Thrift Shop' took one arrangement session. We did it all in a circle that day. 'Evolution of Music' and 'Evolution of Beyonce' took a bunch of different sessions.

Sara Bareilles is one of my favorite singer-songwriters of all time.

I feel like 2013 was one giant snowball of me being confused with my place in life and within the group. A lot of it was self-confidence issues, a lot of outside issues, and a lot of me questioning the future of what I was doing. And my mistake was letting all that influence me so that I wasn't the best I could be in life!

Moving to L.A. and making albums was an exciting outlet, but I always thought I'd be slumming it job to job in N.Y.C. with hopes of being on Broadway!

Being able to wake up every day knowing I'm living out my dream of performing is the best feeling in the world.

I think people are always going to say things about you or disapprove of your relationships or your ideals or your beliefs or something, but I think you have to stand up and stay strong in who you are and not let it affect you.

The first artist that did it for me with just production was James Blake... I was just blown away... I feel like James Blake kind of was the one that introduced me into that world.

I fulfill a part of myself in Pentatonix. And then, we can all step away individually and do the specific things we like because we're all so different in musical tastes.