I've learned to respect Rick Ross' music.

I found that preparation is everything when you cook.

At 19, I felt like I was 40.

We started writing songs like 'Shook Ones' and 'Survival of the Fittest' explaining our neighborhood, but more our personal lives.

All the 'Scarface' beats that you hear Mobb Deep sample, that was my idea.

I like any shoot-'em-up game with guns in it.

You got a lot of fradulent rebels and revolutionaries who are really false prophets.

I used to be cold and emotionless. I believe the disease I was born with made me that way.

I was a very serious child who never got to enjoy life to the fullest like a normal, healthy kid.

When we signed to G-Unit, 50 made us sign the paper that says, 'You can't talk about nothing about me.' He makes everybody sign that.

I wanna like Obama, but he's all about the world government, world banking, war, and stuff like that. You know what I'm sayin'? He's a phony.

It was the camaraderie and the friendships, too, that really drew me to Queensbridge.

There isn't just one black experience out here.

Basically, I've always raised my kids that people learn from their mistakes, and every father wants their kids to be better than them.

Hip-hop music was our life.

I like a lot of the new artists, but there's only one I can name that stands out to me the most: Kendrick Lamar.

I don't like new people coming around me. I'm going to really be leery and watch you and take my time before I embrace you.

I make all types of music. People wanna put me in a little box, and they get mad when I don't stay in there.

The sickle-cell got me where doctors said I couldn't play sports, I couldn't overexert myself.

I been going to the hospital since I was born, about 10 times a year, for about a week or two each time.

When I first went in, I realized there's no green vegetables. They serve, like, spinach once every two weeks. The three meals they serve inmates every day is like slop.

Intellectuals that read a lot of books might not have been interested in Mobb Deep before 'My Infamous Life,' but now they might go, 'Who are these guys?' and check us out.

We gotta keep our sound alive, that dark hip-hop.

I love New York. It 'as made me who I am, know what I mean?

As you get older, everybody changes. You don't do the stupid stuff that you used to.

Jive is a good label, but they're R&B'ed out.

Mobb Deep is a street-rap group. We from off the streets.

Beauty ain't always a little, cute colored flower. Beauty is anything where people be like, 'Damn.'

From the neighborhoods that we grew up in, we had to learn how to deal with people. How to keep certain people at a distance, how to cut people off completely.

Our style of hip-hop, our style of beats, our style of rhymes - you gonna give us burn. We gonna get our burn that we deserve.

When my family first moved to Hempstead in the 1960s, they were one of the first black families. It used to be an all-white neighborhood, but there was white flight when the black people with money started moving in. When I was, like, 13 or 14, Hempstead had just become all black, and the poverty became worse and worse.

Obama represents one-world government, a.k.a. Neocolonialism. Presidents don't change anything locally - they only deal with foreign policy.

The aggressiveness of it attracted me to hip-hop because I was angry inside. I was an angry kid because of the sickle cell. So I liked the anger in hip-hop. That's what attracted me to it; that's what made me want to do it. It helped me get my aggression out.

Nobody's unique. Everybody copies off of each other. Everybody wears the same type of stuff. Nobody's an individual anymore.

Our first name was the Poetical Prophets before we changed it to Mobb Deep, and when I look back on it now, that was, like, a ill name for us because that is what we really were.

Sickle cell was my life before hip-hop. I ain't really have no life - that was it.

I have a deadly disease called Sickle Cell Anemia that I was born with that affects millions of others - primarily in the Black and Latino cultures. I feel I can inspire others with this Sickle Cell disease to be strong and believe in themselves.

When I said, 'I'm only 19, but my mind is old' - at that time, when I said that line, I was 18.

I'm a big fan of Kurt Cobain. I put a picture of him holding a gun on my Instagram for his birthday. He's definitely one of my favorite rock artists.

My favorite Eminem song is probably 'Lose Yourself' because I can relate to it a lot. That's how I feel every time I write a rhyme.

My kids know they can't make the same mistakes I've made. They've been through a lot with me always being on the road.

You have to find a sound that reflects what our souls feel like inside, how our bodies actually feel. That's why we made our own beats. We couldn't find a producer who could give us the feeling to match our lyrics.

Premier was one of the first producers that we reached out to, and he was like, 'Hell yeah! Let's get to work.' He was showing us love and giving young, new artists a chance.

Going to prison actually helped save my life, I believe.

When I was a kid, I used to love to play 'Dig Dug.' It was, like, this little dude, where he digs in the dirt and makes tunnels.

Once I started writing, I realized just how much I really enjoyed it. I was kinda good at it, so I kept at it.

I'm not scared to speak my mind and tell you what it is.

The music is just real powerful when Mobb Deep and Nas work together.

Mobb Deep's music, we represent poverty. That's what made us. That's who made us. That's who brought us up.

When we first signed to Loud, we had a 20-song demo. So all of those songs we wanted to put on the album. But we started making new ones, and through process of elimination, we wanted all the new ones. We didn't like the old ones no more.