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I think rap music is brought up, gangster rap in particular, as well as video games, every other thing they try to hang the ills of society on as a scapegoat.

Rap actually took root in the Negro community, and then in the Hispanic community, long before it impacted on the larger American community as a whole.

Rap is from the streets and I'm from the streets. That's why a lot of people accept me.

The problem is that rap is so often a caricature of its own image. Nobody comes to the table with the seriousness of the effect that it can have; nobody is prepared for that.

Rap is just somebody getting something off his chest. That's all it is.

Rap was started by black people and, thus, is at the foundation of black culture. So people cannot always wrap their minds around someone like me being inspired by it. But if you listen to the things we're saying, they're authentically us.

Rap was my drug.

When you're trying to bring the streets into rap to prove a point, then you already lost. You separate the two, and that ain't to be played with. You've got people that lost their lives and people that are doing real time. If we gon' make music, let's just make music.

The prison-industrial complex, poverty, and the school system has more effect on a young black male in America than Jay-Z does, by far. And that's not a diss to Jay-Z. The crime rate in the black community was high before hip hop. Rapping about it is just a reflection of the life a lot of people are living.

Rap music is really good when you're traumatized.