Quote

Protest is patriotic. Since the beginning of musical time, American singers and songwriters have used their talent and bully pulpits to show us America's strengths and shortcomings.

It wasn't my natural inclination to get into writing protest songs.

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.

Early in my career, people wanted to hear music about protest, about trying to change things.

Hip hop is the strongest form of protest there is, and it doesn't always have to be a violent protest. It can be romantic, also. When you listen to Kanye West's 'Street Lights' for example, there's romance, there's pain - you feel the essence. I get the same thing from Drake and 2 Chainz.

Other than Green Day, we haven't had a lot of protest music over the past few decades.

You can't just sit around and make protest albums all your life; eventually it comes to the point where you have to do something.

When you do have songs where you're going to say something, some kind of statement about cultural or social stuff, that in general people love it. People love to be challenged in that way.

I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I'm not going.