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I didn't grow up listening to hip-hop since I was six.

When I was growing up, hip-hop was still a pretty specialised thing.

Hip hop has the urgency and rebelliousness that early rock n' roll and punk had: a level of rule-breaking and flirtation with danger. It allows you to break the rules.

I think one of the reasons I've had success in hip-hop is that I can bring out vulnerability in people who are generally seen as tough guys. To me, when a hip-hop musician always plays tough, I find it annoying because I know they're not really like that - there's something deeper and vulnerable. There has to be, because they're human beings.

Hip-hop is an instant gratification, winners and losers circle, and often those who are losing give up after three or four, five years.

A certain administration which I won't call by name took the arts out of the schools, and that left the brothers out on the street with nothing, so they went to the turntables and started rhyming. Then they had a way to express themselves, and that's the birth of hip-hop.

Hip-hop lasted and survived all these years that you have to give it credit. Even though it's not up to people's expectations anymore, its still here, and that's says a lot.

Hip-hop has had this history where the predecessor just is so harsh and not nice to the next coming generation that it creates this separation and this gap.

I don't think that early hip hop stood out to be a social critique. A lot of fans of mine think that hip hop's ultimate responsibility is to critique social structures.

I always thought that there was something in hip-hop culture that was the misfit of all the musical styles, where they didn't really belong. They're kind of like, 'No, we're a real culture! We're not going anywhere, you can't get rid of us!' I really liked that there was a rebelliousness about it. I connected with that.