Before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible.

I think that I am seeing the Internet and seeing technology take and seeing how the work I do through music directly affects people's lives better than any politician I've ever met.

Everybody could write, deejay, rap. Everybody could do it all.

My fans like to be romantic. I feel like I'm creating at least at the same level or even a higher level of creativity than I was at twenty-one. I've gotten better as an artist.

I like the fact that I can rep New York, but my style does not -- I'm not trapped in a New York thing. I can do art songs with other artists and it's seamless.

I take certain steps to make sure I'm relevant artistically. I always have new music and a reason to be on the road. I'm not just playing 'Get By' over and over. I have 12 albums.

When I'm in the studio, I'm strictly thinking about the beats, the rhymes and the song. The decision I make once the songs are created, and there's a barcode put on the package, and I'm out there in the street selling it, those decisions as a businessman are different than the creative decisions you make.

I'm spinning records and I look across the restaurant and I see somebody who looks Asian. And I'm like, Yo, that looks like Yoko Ono. I'm like, oh, I can just meet -- that's going to be great. Then I look carefully and I'm like, That's not Yoko Ono, that's Bruno Mars. And it was Bruno Mars. That just happened recently. I was bugging out. Because that was totally not Yoko Ono at all.

There just needs to be a gay rapper. He doesn't have to be flamboyant, just a rapper who identifies as gay -- who's better than everybody. Unfortunately hip-hop is so competitive that in order for fringe groups to get in, you gotta be better than whoever's the best.

With Prisoner of Conscience, the focus was -- I've worked with Madlib, High Tech, Kanye West, J Dilla. I feel like I've worked with some of the greatest of all time. That's been overlooked. That's been overshadowed by the weight of the lyrics.

Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common senseNext best thing I do a record with common sense.

If you ain't using all the talents God provided you with

For the betterment of Man, understand,

You ain't nothing but a waste.

I just got a new manager. He's like, So what do you want to do with the deejay thing? I'm like, The deejay thing for me is more my hobby. It's great when you can supplement your income, when you have a weekly or something, it's fun. It's really a hobby, because I don't want it to take away from what I do, which is emceeing.

I think the biggest problem in our country is mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex. From the Rockefeller drug laws to stand your ground to stop and frisk, all these are pointing people, especially and disproportionately black and brown people, towards the criminal-justice system. It's depleting whole generations of people.

I'd like to work with Outkast, I'd like to work with RZA, I'd like to work with Timbaland, York, a whole bunch of people.

If you go to a college campus and you do stop and frisk, you're going to find a lot of drugs there too.

Nowadays rap artists coming half-hearted,

Commercial like pop, or underground like black markets.

Where were you the day hip-hop died?

Is it too early to mourn? Is it too late to ride?

Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools.

Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists -- with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s.

But it becomes disrespectful when the artist's process is not respected.