I’m a hustler, baby; I sell water to a well!

I’m here to tell niggas it ain’t all swell.There’s Heaven then there’s Hell niggasOne day your cruisin’ in your seven,Next day your sweatin’, forgettin’ your lies,Alibis ain’t matchin’ up, bullshit catchin’ upHit with the RICO,...

I’m hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That’s what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King...

It’s always been most important for me to figure out “my space” rather than trying to check out what everyone else is up to, minute by minute. Technology is making it easier to connect to...

I couldn’t even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn’t let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn’t stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping...

As sure as this Earth is turnin, souls burnin / In search of higher learnin, turnin in every direction seeking direction / My moms cryin cause her insides are dyin / Her son tryin her...

A poet’s mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.

We change people through conversation, not through censorship.

Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama’s running so we all can fly.

Man I’m high off life. Fuck it, I’m WASTED

Only God can judge me so I’m gone, either love me or leave me alone.

Jealousy’s a weak emotion.

You could name practically any problem in the hood and there’d be a rap song for you.

This communist talk is so confusing

Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music.

To me, its just a word, a word whose power is owned by the user and his or her intention. People give words power, so banning a word is futile, really. ‘Nigga’ becomes ‘porch monkey’...

I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!

Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful...

Housing projects can seem like labyrinths to outsiders, as complicated and intimidating as a Moroccan bazaar. But we knew our way around.