We're the only ones who can change our reality.

I think people psych themselves out before they listen to jazz a lot, thinking that they have to, like, put on a suit or something. That's not what it is.

People need to realize that even the greatest jazz musicians, when they listen to jazz, they're not like, analyzing it and deconstructing it - they're enjoying it. It's like listening to any other style of music. It's saying something to you, and you kind of just absorb it.

My mum liked gospel and R&B, Chaka Khan, and Whitney Houston.

All John Coltrane's records are amazing.

I started playing with this band, the Polyester Players. It was my introduction into funk. So I went and got a James Brown record. 'Black Caesar' is a film score, but it's so dope.

Music is an expression of life, who you are, and what you've been through.

Funk could very easily be called jazz, but you call it funk. Does that really matter? People dig that they associate themselves with certain genres, but the genres to me are made up things, like an imaginary world.

L.A. has always been hated on so much. I remember, the first time I went to New York, I was at jam sessions, and people would hear me and come up to me and be like, 'Oh wow, you're from L.A.? Really?'

I was hearing music in my head and trying to play it on the clarinet, but it didn't match.' Then, literally the first day, it did with the saxophone. I was like, 'Oh man, that's what I've been trying to do; this is what it's supposed to sound like.'

L.A. is a big city that has a lot of music in it but is not necessarily known for it. A lot of musicians got lost in that. You can make a living; you can gig a lot within the city and never get out of it. That was something that me and my friends, our generation, were afraid of happening to us.

There were two things I discovered when I toured with Snoop. One was that the band was all jazz musicians. The second was to instil in me a respect for other styles of music. From then on, whenever I played a new kind of music, I came with the same kind of open mind. What are they trying to do? What are they hearing? How do they see music?

Malcolm X's separatist ideas were situational. If you think about where African-Americans were in the 1940s and 1950s, we needed to step away because that force, which is still present but more subdued, was very in your face, and we needed to take a step back just to get some clarity.

The musicians I really looked up to as a kid were the ones who could play everything.

When I started saxophone, my dad took me to my uncle's church, and I started playing there, too. At its best, music serves a greater purpose, and that showed me a whole other side to spiritual jazz, one which you can hear in the music - the gospel and blues feel, the soul that's embedded into the more avant-garde records.

At the time of 'The Epic,' as a core band, we were all spending so much time apart making music for other people that by the time we got together - even though we grew up together and there's a special connection we have - it was like a rare privilege to come together.

One of the things I did learn from 'The Epic' was that we don't have to feel so much pressure to conform to set formats. A song doesn't have to be three minutes and 30 seconds.

When I was working on 'To Pimp A Butterfly' and 'DAMN.,' I'm really making music for Kendrick. It's a different mindset than when I'm making music for me. I'm trying to get into his head and figure out what he wants because it's his vision. That's what I expect from people when they're playing on my records.

We started 'Heaven And Earth' in 2016. That was probably the heaviest touring year of my whole life. We probably did almost 200 shows in 2016. We went into the studio, and I honestly didn't know what the album was going to be. So I just kind of started picking songs that I liked.

When I was about seventeen, I had a group called the Young Jazz Giants. We played all originals. When we would finish playing, people would be like, 'Oh my God, that was so nice, that was so great.' But Pops would never tell us we were the best. He would give it to us straight, like, 'You're out of tune. You're dropping beats.'

I think the reason why I see life as this never-ending struggle is because I imagine it having endless potential.

I don't want to live my life to necessarily overcome struggle, but when I am going to hit struggle throughout my life, I face it head on.

I was that kid who made his friends listen to the albums they didn't want to.

Music is this medium to express who I am and what I've been through and my thoughts and what my feelings on the world are. We're all on the planet together; I'm just using this medium to express how I see it.

As a musician, your instrument is almost predetermined. I had played drums, piano, clarinet, but when I heard Wayne Shorter play the saxophone, I knew that sound is what I wanted.

My third day playing saxophone, I was in front of a congregation. I still didn't know the names of all the notes. I was playing by ear, following along, but it was such an encouraging environment, I couldn't fail. It was all, 'Yeah baby, you sound real good' no matter what you play. It was a great way to learn.

I grew up with a sense of music being a very spiritual experience while playing in church and with parents who were socially aware, always teaching me to look beyond the obvious in understanding how the world works.

Music doesn't come out of you, it comes through you. You are almost like a messenger.

Pursue your dreams but have a backup plan.

The role in 'See No Evil,' Jacob Goodnight, was perfect for me, so if I got the opportunity to do that again, I certainly would consider that.

I was taught, growing up, that there are two ends of the political spectrum: left and right. But there's so much more than that. For me, it's about liberty versus authoritarianism.

I grew up in rural Missouri about two hours north of St. Louis, and if the wind was blowing right on a Saturday night, I could catch All Star Wrestling out of Kansas City, which was run by Bob Geigel, and some of the stars there were Bulldog Bob Brower and Ray Candy.

My favorite movie of all time is 'The Silence of the Lambs.' I think Hannibal Lecter is the scariest movie monster ever because he's smarter than you are.

Employment is a contract between an employer and an employee. Thus, laws prohibiting discriminatory pay are an infringement on private contracts.

I'll admit, when I look back on the past couple decades, a lot of it seems like a blur.

Kane and Glenn Jacobs are two separate entities, you know.

Social studies was my favorite subject. I remember I portrayed Walter Mondale in a mock debate in my sophomore social studies class.

When I think about it, 20 years really seems like a blink of an eye sometimes. I wish I would have made a more concerted effort to enjoy things along the way.

By mandating equal pay, the government erases the competitive advantage of those people who are willing to take less pay. In addition, employers are less willing to hire employees who they believe could subject them to increased liability.

Honestly, I think we in the WWE are very underrated as performers. What we do would be very difficult for even an experienced actor. To go out and sometimes have 15 minutes of verbiage, sometimes have to ad-lib and then, of course, have other variables such as the interaction with the audience, it can be challenging.

My most memorable WrestleMania ever was my first: at WrestleMania 14 in Boston against The Undertaker. That was a huge high point in my career and an absolute highlight of my career.

In my primary, I only won by 23 votes in that one, so every vote really does count, and I want to make sure I get as many as I possibly can.

When you ask someone for their vote, you are asking them to place their confidence in you as the steward of the community, so it was humbling that people placed their faith and trust in me.

Kane dons the mask because he is horribly disfigured, unstable, mentally insane and crazy, so I thought it would basically look like he had escaped from an institution. Then, I get the creative for the costume, and it looked like a superhero.

Wrestling is a lot like any other workplace. You don't really talk religion or politics. But we are all independent contractors, so we pay our taxes quarterly. And we talk about taxes.

I have been around a long time and shared some very elite company.

The Ledbetter Act is aimed at equality. But individuals are not equal. We all have different talents, resources, interests, abilities, educations, and backgrounds.

I believe that the Kane/Undertaker story, if you look at epic storytelling like Greek mythology, that is what it is. It is the best piece of epic storytelling that the WWE has ever done.

I'm not sure what the average career span of a WWE superstar is, but I've exceeded that by a long way.

There are things that I can agree with from both sides: perhaps the civil libertarian issues of the Left and also the economic freedom issues of the Right while still rejecting the big-government tendencies of both sides of the political spectrum.