The first time that I met B.I.G. was in 1994, summer of '94 - I believe it was August. I think it was right after 'Ready to Die' came out.

Hip-hop is as much an attitude and perspective as it is a music form.

People underestimate hip-hop the way they have sometimes underestimated comic books.

Our Luke Cage is a black hero, not a hero who happens to be black.

All black art, post-slavery, has always tried to prove in its own way that a black life is the equivalent of anyone else's.

It's much easier to talk about racism when you're able to use mutants as a metaphor. People would much rather talk about Charles Xavier and Magneto than they would about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.

Fatherhood is something that is personal to me because I didn't grow up around my father.

Let's face it: there aren't a lot of black superheroes. So, in dealing with a black superhero, you're going to deal with ugly history and the beauty of history.

'Daredevil' is haunted by Frank Miller, from the standpoint of the Frank Miller run on 'Daredevil' is so insurmountable.

Even though my approach is slightly different, the Luke Cage of 'Jessica Jones' is no stranger to the Luke Cage of Marvel's 'Luke Cage.' It's really a continuation to a certain extent. It's just got a little different flavor, but it's still the same suit.

The first 'Creed' is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

When you scratch the soul of hip-hop, you find R&B and funk but also reggae.

My era was '90s Carhartt-and-Timberlands hip-hop. That's my rock n' roll.

The thing that was fascinating and frustrating about Pac was that he clearly knew better than to go down the gangster road that he went down. Pac knew - and he was right - that thug energy could be redirected into fearless positivity.

I finally achieved my dream by being a TV showrunner.

Most superheroes, when you look at origin stories - before they invent their costume, they just go with what's around.

You can't really say that Bushmaster or Mariah Dillard is a bigger bad, because they both do some pretty heinous things.

The Luke Cage you saw in Season One was a reluctant hero. He was trying to figure out if he wanted to be a hero in the first place. And then fate intervened and forced him to step up his game.

Hip hop fans are obsessed, and they're geeks about hip hop. Comic book fans are also geeks, and when you can meld the two, then you open the world up to, I think, communities that will just take to each other.

The thing about being black in a mostly white industry, particularly as a black male, is you can't lose your temper in the same way. Essentially, you are an angry black man losing his temper in a way that's unprofessional, as opposed to an industry that has protected unprofessional white males in perpetua.

I just felt that Danny Rand within the Luke Cage universe... I just felt that he was going to be dope.

Even though I'm not Jamaican, I've always loved Jamaican culture because, to me, it's the island of magic, it's the island of politics, of resistance.

The power that you have as a storyteller is to be able to tell stories that are at once entertaining but also never lose sight of what's going on in the real world.

The reason I keep making so many musical metaphors with 'Luke Cage' is that I don't view it as much a television show as I do a concept album with dialogue.