Hip-hop is ever changing but you'll always have the pack. And you'll always have those people who are separated from the pack.
The emotions in a song - the anger, aggression - have got to be legitimate.
People can try to reinvent themselves. I don't think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you've done up to now.
Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.
Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you got your back turned.
Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.
I need to keep working on myself for a while.
Say there's a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter - for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that's saying is that he's living a fantasy life of rebellion.
Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape; that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all I love.
Honestly, I never really put the mic down.
I always try to be smart. I try to treat all the money I'm making like it's the last time I'm going to make it.
Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn't much. But the things that I'm really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I'm not successful, what do I have?
I come from Detroit where it's rough and I'm not a smooth talker.
Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.
I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.
Well, I'm working all the time to stay out of trouble!
A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I'm learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, 'I can't go to Kmart. I can't take my kids to the haunted house.'
Rap was my drug.
You're not going to say anything about me that I'm not going to say about myself. There's so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I'm going to say it before they can. It's the best policy for me.
As for my stuff, I'm just doing guest verses for other people's records. I try to stay recording, because if I don't, I get rusty.
I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don't know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.
If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don't back down.
I felt like I had a really bad case of writer's block... Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a lot of self-loathing.
I didn't just invent saying offensive things.
I was a smart kid, but I hated school.
It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.
Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.
Honestly, I'd love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I'm doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I'm doing.
Touring is hard on the body.
Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.
I feel like a spoilt rapper. I get to pick and choose everything.
When 'Paul's Boutique' came out, I was one of the fans that didn't get it.
