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Rap culture is interesting and different and has purpose but it has a non-romantic view of life and of social feelings. There may be a void in that.

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.

Americans in general have a lot of compassion, we just don't always have the same view of how that compassion is implemented.

Rap is a gimmick, but I'm for the hip-hop, the culture.

We still have a lot of work to do in American culture. More open-mindedness is happening - in some cases rapidly, in some, slowly.

Many elitists hate rap as much as they hate country, though they don't like to admit it for fear of appearing racially insensitive.

Sometimes you see how humanity can rise above any kind of cultural ills and hate that a person's capacity to love and communicate and forgive can be bigger than anything else.

When you've been raised in care, rap music isn't just about guns and sexism. They're talking about real things you can hang on to, problems of identity that you have sympathy with. It's not just about the music, with rap: when I was in care, it meant a whole lot more than that.

There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture.

American culture is not about experiencing our shame, it's about denying it. It's been that way our whole history.