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I like Public Enemy a great deal.

I don't dislike rappers or hip-hop or people who like it. I went to the Def Jam tour in Manchester in the '80s when rap was inspirational. Public Enemy were awesome. But it's all about status and bling now, and it doesn't say anything to me.

Back in the day, when the D.J. would be playing a record, I'd be on the mic trying to hype up the crowd. So once Public Enemy became a rap group, I decided that that's the role that I wanted to take on. I wanted to be the one that was hyping, because I've always been good at it. I can hype up any crowd.

I loved hip-hop. The first stuff I heard was Public Enemy, and I couldn't believe it. It was amazing, and I've always loved hip-hop.

I played more of an advisory role with Public Enemy. I really trusted them to make the music that they wanted to make, and the way The Bomb Squad worked with the... they created their whole own world of music.

Somewhere down the line, the evil ones stole the legacy of hip hop and flipped it to a corporate type of hip hop. They decided to tell everybody 'Well, this is what hip hop is,' instead of coming back to the pioneers and getting the true definition of what hip hop is and what it was and what we been pushing for all these years.

Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.

The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

People underestimate the hip-hop audience and the capacity to understand politics when it's part of music.