A Wise Man Told Me Don't Argue

New York Has A Thousand Universes In It That Don't Always Connect But We Do All Walk The Same Streets, Hear The Same Sirens, Ride The Same Subways, See The Same Headlines In The Post, Read The Same Writings On The Walls. That Shared Landscape Gets Inside Of All Of Us And, In Some Small Way, Unites Us, Makes Us Think We Know Each Other Even When We Don't.

Rap Has Been A Path Between Cultures In The Best Tradition Of Popular Music.

I Spring Train In The Winter, Around Early December...

My Life After Childhood Has Two Main Stories: The Story Of The Hustler And The Story Of The Rapper, And The Two Overlap As Much As They Diverge. I Was On The Streets For More Than Half Of My Life From The Time I Was Thirteen Years Old. People Sometimes Say That Now I'm So Far Away From That Life - Now That I've Got Businesses And Grammys And Magazine Covers - That I Have No Right To Rap About It. But How Distant Is The Story Of Your Own Life Ever Going To Be? The Feelings I Had During That Part Of My Life Were Burned Into Me Like A Brand. It Was Life During Wartime.

You Could Name Practically Any Problem In The Hood And There'd Be A Rap Song For You.