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I'd like to see people pay attention to the science of hip hop. The knowledge part, the political side of what hip hop could do, or where hip hop is gonna go. I always say it's gonna become universal as we become a galactic union.

I'm a huge hip-hop fan from way back in the day.

I aim my music at the hip black hip-hop audience.

A lot of people in my generation, we use hip-hop as a tool to compose.

Rap is a gimmick, but I'm for the hip-hop, the culture.

I grew up in New York City in the '80s, and it was the epicenter of hip-hop. There was no Internet. Cable television wasn't as broad. I would listen to the radio, hear cars pass by playing a song, or tape songs off of the radio. At that time, there was such an excitement around hip-hop music.

At a certain point, I got into the older, cooler crowd, and they listened to hip-hop. I was desperately trying to fit in.

I'm probably not as big of a hip-hop fan as people may think. I'm not up on all the artists and know all their stuff.

I want kids of this generation to see that everything is cool, that there's some kind of unity in hip-hop. We all found something that's really important to us, and music is all we've really got.

I've always felt that because I'm from Cleveland, which isn't recognised as a place for hip-hop, I needed to step it up if I wanted to make myself known.