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I remember the first time I saw the 'Sugarhill Gang' on Soul Train. I was 11 or 12. I was like, 'What's going on? How did those guys get on national TV?' And then, when I was a little older, a rapper from the neighborhood got a record deal. I was shocked.

I looked at the rap community like street kids wanting their own brand. But now I look at that period with the rappers in the 90s as a trend of the moment. What it taught me was never to follow a trend, because trends move on.

I see dancehall reggae and hip-hop as fused together, When I was a kid, they were the two kinds of music that spoke to me and said 'Move!'

Gang violence in America is not a sudden problem. It has been a part of urban life for years, offering an aggressive definition and identity to those seeking a place to belong in the chaos of large metropolitan areas.

The Black Panther Party was not a gang. They grew out of a young black intelligentsia on college campuses.

The fact is that in too many communities in cities in Britain gangs now have become completely rooted into these communities and they destroy them around them.

Hip-Hop isn't just music, it is also a spiritual movement of the blacks! You can't just call Hip-Hop a trend!

Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.

I believe that I understand gangs better than others. Because they're formed out of necessity. They're formed by people to keep from being suppressed.