Chief Keef scares me. Not him specifically, but just the culture that he represents.
This nation was founded by rebels and revolutionaries, and its flags were carried across the battlefields by people who were very, very against the status quo and who questioned and criticized.
There's already been black presidents who've been corrupt, so it doesn't strike me that having a black man in office means he's going to be the Messiah.
I was born Muslim, but for a large part of my life, I wasn't necessarily raised Muslim. My father always kept everything around us, from Western philosophy to Eastern philosophy.
Sometimes I do feel hopeless when I look out and scream out through my music, and I scream out through these interviews, and I scream out to people to kind of get their attention back on the things that are meaningful. There's people dying on the streets of Chicago - young people, young men and women who are losing their lives.
I think you have to ask yourself does voting work on the level that you are trying to effectuate change; that is the conversation you must have.
In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama, and the United States of America.
I trust people to be human. Sometimes you do things that make amazing amounts of sense; sometimes you do things that don't make any sense whatsoever.
Some stuff I don't even put out. I'll just be home, happy, creating something for myself, and then ball it up and throw it in the trash. It's less about trying to prove something or get on somebody's list or make a fan happy or make a hater mad or convert a non-believer. That's not the case for me anymore.
We have to make the physical music a little more valuable instead of just having a download link and a bunch of songs you downloaded from some torrent site. People try to make the music value-less, and I don't think we're going to stop that train, but the one thing that they can't devalue are things that are in the outside world.
It definitely wasn't like, 'Hey, I'm going to steal that, and nobody's going to know.' The original 'T.R.O.Y.' came out in 1992, and it was like a 20th anniversary kind of thing. All of those intentions were there for it to be resurrecting a classic for a new generation. I tried to honor it.
When you start creating opinion, and you start creating difference of opinion, you're doing something. People are actually sitting down and critiquing. A lot of the stuff people hate, they really don't. They only look at the outer shell. They don't really get into it.
True terrorism, you know, weaponized fear. In defense of ourselves, we're fighting - actively fighting something else. But if you're going to fight terrorism, to me, you fight the root causes of terrorism.
Some people are the greatest people on Earth with good hearts and will get in the studio and make the most negative music in the world for the sake of success. That's what the music business does to you. That's what capitalism does to you.
I think Romney's talking himself out of the election, to be honest. I was wondering what was gonna happen when the Republican power structure turned the money on, and then they turned on the money and nothing happened.
What's the biggest commercial for aggression, sexuality and materialism? What gets pumped into these kids' heads? Taking someone else's girl, which is so laissez-faire in hip-hop, will get you killed in the streets, but it doesn't seem to be an issue when you hear it on the radio.
You know what I had a problem with? The war - the war in Afghanistan.
I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's actually causing the other forms of terrorism. You know, the root cause of terrorism is the stuff that the U.S. government allows to happen, and the foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it's easy for us because it's just some oil.
I think there's a lot of the hip-hop crowd behind Barack Obama because he's a black man. Honestly, I'm rooting for Hillary because race is only going to go so far. All the presidents are men at the end of the day.
With 'Hip-Hop Saved My Life,' I attempted to make 'Kick, Push,' but for rappers. To give a real basic play-by-play of the life of a rapper before he makes it - if he ever makes it, because you can get stuck in that and be trying to make it for the rest of your life.
