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Graffiti has an interesting relationship to the broader world of hip-hop: It's part of the culture, but also in a weird way a stepchild of the culture.

My graffiti really comes more from a May '68, sort of Situationist vibe than the hip-hop world. I think a real graffiti artist would find me a poser.

I was a rapper and a DJ, and if you wanted to be involved in hip-hop, you had to be involved in the sonic, the kinetic and the visual aspects. The visual was graffiti.

I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.

I know about hip-hop culture, whether it's graffiti writing or DJ-ing or being an MC.

A lot of the hip hop artists don't write music. They write words.

I can't imagine anybody who ends up being an artist who didn't pass through a time of geekiness.

Some of the hip-hop stuff people get into is exciting, because there's a passion and there's something to explain to a more mainstream audience, so you get these passionate writers who want to express their love for rap and hip-hop, which is cool.

After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture.

I started painting graffiti in the classic New York style of big letters and characters but I was never very good at it.