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It feels different.... When hip-hop was beginning for me, people weren't making the kind of money that they make now. It was for the love of doing it and having fun with it.

Hip-hop from the beginning has always been aspirational. It always broke that notion that an artist can't think about money as well. Just so long as you separate the two and you're not making music with business in mind. At some point, it has to be real when they touch it, when they listen to it. Something has to resonate with them that's real.

You want to buy cars and houses and castles, all of that's on you and how America has systematized your mind to be into materialism. Hip-hop ain't got nothing to do with that. I'm glad that anybody making money has picked themselves up - I just want them to give some of it back to the community.

Hip Hop has become real constrained. The creative juices and creative flows have been diminished.

I think when people say 'real hip-hop,' they want it more buried in the streets. They want it more connected to the streets and the grime and the roughness of the streets. They don't want the fluff.

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

Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.

Hip-hop is all about impact, baby. You can sell records, you can be two-times platinum, you can be gold... but if you lame, you lame, man. We try to provide the exact opposite of that. It's style, individuality, confidence. We exude that.

Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change.