I just appreciate the love that I get and support from hip-hop.

My thing is, you have to let young artists be young artists.

I always say a rapper is like a halfback in the NFL. You got about seven years, then it's a wrap.

I was heavily influenced by Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Caz, but I kind of wanted to take it somewhere else.

It's hard to have fun and make a fun album when you know that it's something that you need to say.

There are certain things that I wish people knew - certain things that I feel I started and certain things that I'm responsible for. Sometimes you wish people knew where a certain style of rapping came from or who was the first one to say whatever.

Every generation wants that real hip-hop. And I've always been able to bring that.

The young kids out there doing their thing, I can't knock them.

Being a new artist, I was trying to make a good album and hope that people like Kool Moe Dee and Melle Mel and some of the firstborns appreciated it. I was being influenced by them brothers there. That's where I got my start and my first listen.

When I was in high school, the energy in hip-hop at that point was the park energy... I was just trying to develop my style at that point, and I think, when you're trying to find your style, you find yourself.

I started studying in '85 and got knowledge of self and started spitting. What was going on was taking the understanding of what I was reading and applying it with my life and applying it with my rhymes.

You know, 'Paid in Full' is a classic album, man. It kind of got me to where I am now, so I can never get tired of 'Paid in Full.'

To me, sometimes things outside of rap inspire me to rap.

We need a few more Kanyes, people that's really passionate about hip-hop and who keep it alive.

Subconsciously, Islam took over me, so it was like eighty or ninety percent of the fabric of the person I was.

I try to make my flow sound like a John Coltrane solo.

Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man - it's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.

I got a lot of vinyl, a lot of music in general in the house.

Age don't count in the booth.

I can't look at TV without seeing something that's been influenced by rap. Even commercials for cereal. When I was small, I was a fan of cartoon characters - now the cartoon characters are rapping!

I try to stay true to my style, and I understand the foundation of my style and where it came from. But at the same time, you take that experience and learn different ways to write, different ways to turn on that creative energy.

The laws are gonna have to change. And it's 2016. We can't keep using all the laws that was made back in the 1700s. We're gonna have to understand that times have changed.

As I grew up, a lot of the music was made to uplift the spirit.

My approach to writing rhymes went hand in hand with the music. I'd try to make different rhythms with my rhymes on the track by tripping up patterns, using multi-syllable words, different syncopations. I'd try to be like a different instrument.