Mos Def

You're not gonna get through life without being worshipful or devoted to something. You're either devoted to your job, or to your desires. So the best way to spend your life is to try to be devoted to prayer, to Allah.

I'm an independent thinker. And I'm not the poster child for any movement. I'm trying to support whatever's right no matter where it is.

I believe the projects were a social experiment; we were laboratory rats stacked on top of each other, and people just knew, inherently, that there was something wrong. There's not a lot of regard for the property by the residents.

Hip-hop is the last true folk art.

I don't have advice for people on how to dress. People should dress based on what they find beautiful. My best advice: Keep your clothes clean.

To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.

I was taught when there's somethin' you can change around keep quiet, you got nothin' to complain about.

You have to be an extremist to believe that you're gonna be the president of the United States and your name is Barack Hussein Obama! And he's using extreme methods, but his application is very smooth. Michelle Obama is extreme, her presence is extreme. And it's an extreme good. Extreme is not negative.

It wouldn't be fair to cast aspersions on an entire cultural movement based on the actions of a few. To quote my grandfather, 'One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch.'

All the things that are worth doing, take time.

I'm a passionate person. I'm a lot of things, like most people are. Most people are dynamic. The focus is not on me though, I'm a screen. The aim is to always keep myself in the position where the screen is clear.

Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years it's a name that the streets taught me a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name and it's time to expand and move on.