I'm real particular about delivery. You can write the illest rhymes in the world, but can you deliver it right?

All the Public Enemy albums, I knew what records they were sampling but was like, 'How'd they construct it like this?!'

The great thing was that both K-Ci and JoJo told me to not make an R&B track that was reminiscent of radio hit records. 'Make a Gang Starr track and we'll write our lyrics to that,' they told me. They couldn't stress it enough.

The passing of my accountant, Mary Coleman, who was the first person I shouted out on 'In Memory of...' was particularly devastating for me. She was beyond my accountant. She was my mother away from home.

Anyone from our era knows that Guru was in every club and every bar and every spot. He could go all night, all day. And he would never be tired!

Well, I've always held down Guru… His spirit knows this.

I'm a bass player and I'm a drummer - I'm a big fan of bass players.

Everything I do is in a New York state of mind. I'm indebted to preserving the sound of the city.

A lot of Friday nights, Guru and I would go kick it with Biggie, since he was just three blocks down from us.

Guru and I had a house in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, for a while and we used to have wild parties there when we weren't in the studio. It was like a fraternity house.

I've never sampled just one artist, I'm known for my reputation and my creativity.

You have to know who you're making music for.

From Jay-Z to Nas to Kanye to whoever, I'm just not the type to say, 'Hey, let me get on your album.' If they want me, they're going to reach out and say, 'I need a joint from you.'

If I gotta do a Jay-Z beat I want to stop everything. Tell everybody hold my calls, everything.

I've always wanted to work with Klashnekoff. He's been around for years! He's sorta my age but he is dope. The flow, the lyrics, it's just dope music.

All of our other albums were consecutive year after year: 'No More Mr. Nice Guy,' 'Step in the Arena,' 'Daily Operation,' 'Hard to Earn.' After 'Hard to Earn,' a four-year gap is a lot of not having Gang Starr music, as far as an album is concerned.

Guru died tragically and there were so many rumors about how he went out. I got to see him in the hospital right before he passed, and one of the last things I said to him before I walked out of the room was that I was going to make sure that his family was straight.

I'm a very spiritual guy.

The majority of my life is spent doing nothing but godly things, especially when it comes to dealing with other people.

I listen to my early Gang Starr interviews, I'm like, damn I was really trying to sound like a New Yorker then.

I'm a country boy.

Everybody deserves a piece of where they live, in some type of fashion. Music is just my way of preserving that.

Guru always wanted to do what he called a 'chick record.' By coincidence, every time we did one, he was either breaking up with one or with a new girl that he loved.

You can't do seven successful albums and just hate each other. Our yin and yang, and night and day, is what made us great when we went into the studio.

When I was 19 I had a record deal.

I remember going backstage on a random night and Kanye goes, 'Ayo Premier, I'm about to drop an album called 'College Dropout' and I'm rapping on the whole thing. And as I soon it drop it's gonna go double platinum.' I looked at him like, 'That's a bold statement to make if you never rapped before.'

Jay Z and Biggie and Nas always listened to my direction. They listened and they applied it and I also listened to their opinions and that's why the records came out so good.

My crew used to listen to 'Taking It to the Top' by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

My musical knowledge goes beyond hip-hop.

I love heavy metal, Metallica. I'm into Jefferson Starship and acid rock.

Yeah, Travis Scott's dad taught me how to ride minibikes and how to repair the engines. His name's Jack Webster. Jack had a drum set and his brother had a bass. So I used to play with them, and that's what started me wanting to get into music and take it serious. And this is before rap.

I was a heavy kid, even though I was into sports and very active.

I grew up in a town called Prairie View. It's like 45 minutes outside of Houston.

My mom's an art teacher, so I always had music in the house. She always had records, and I was mesmerized by the mechanics of how a turntable works.

Every now and then there might be a beat someone turned down that I have as an unused beat. But everything that predominantly matches the artist in my 30 years of doing this, it was me walking in and sitting there with no drums, no samples, no nothing, and making a beat on the spot.

I've been sequencing all of my albums, from any Gang Starr stuff to Jeru to Group Home, all of it. I pay a lot of attention to that and really always have. I've even helped sequence friend's projects.

I've always cared about how certain songs fade into other ones and which songs should follow others. I studied that as a consumer and fan before I even got into music.

Actually, for 'Family & Loyalty' I wanted Drake on the track but he was about to go on tour for his Scorpion album, so timewise it wasn't going to work.

I'm not a tough guy, but I'll throw down just like the rest of them if I have to.

I've done some scoring in the past, but I want to get into it on a bigger level - a Danny Elfman level.

It's whatever - people like me and Dre are music people, so we're beyond just hip-hop. We're purists. Not everybody who makes beats is a purist.

With 'Family and Loyalty,' I didn't already have an idea for that video. So I called Fab Five Freddy. I wanted to get a director that I didn't have to explain Gang Starr to and he was with it.

Bad Name' is just that head-nod, traditional loop over a breakbeat, chopped up, and it sounds like the way I do my thing.

I'm passionate about music in general, not just hip-hop. But when it comes to hip-hop, I don't wanna see it die culturally.

The Nike joint 'Classic' with Kanye, Nas, KRS-One, that was a remix - Rick Rubin did the original, and his was a double-time tempo; mine was a regular boom-bap tempo, and they liked it so much that we ended up doing the video to it.

I know what a Gang Starr album that's done is supposed to sound like.

Guru was actually who A&R'd and got Lord Finesse signed because he used to listen to the demos at Wild Pitch. And he was the one who actually said, ‘Yo, this Lord Finesse guy is dope.' And Stuart Fine signed him to Wild Pitch. That's how we became labelmates.

If I feel like something needs to be updated, I'll break my neck to outdo the original.

I would always have turntable elements in my records even if it was just one scratch.

When I hold a gun, I know how to be sensible about it. I'm not holding it to wild out or just to shoot somebody because I'm mad at him. There's responsibility in buying that gun, and part of it is dealing with it like a man, and not dealing with it like an idiot, and getting behind iron bars for unnecessary reasons.