Black Thought

At this point, in 2008, if you put out a book, a movie, or write a verse, paint a painting, it should have some sort of social value. ”

I think the true artist - musician, dancer, writer, actor - a true artist is able to sort of articulate pain and tragedy, in a way that sort of expresses what the listener or the beholder may have been feeling but was less able to communicate. ”

My children have a world of opportunities that were not available to me. My kids have no idea about going without - there's no desire or need they have that hasn't been fulfilled, which is a blessing. ”

The most profound memory I have from my childhood is burning down my house at 6 years old. ”

I feel like visual art, the culinary arts, the theatrical arts - the medium changes, the tools that you use to tell whatever the story changes, but you're still all telling stories. ”

Commercial success won't come to us from a change in the music. It will gradually be the result of a change in the appetite of the audience. ”

The thing that's carried over from my visual-art education into what I do musically is my openness. ”

When I was coming up, a freestyle wasn't a freestyle unless everything was completely improvised, in-the-moment and right there, and you had to incorporate various elements of what was going on in the room on the day. ”

We've always been a band that intentionally transcended race and age. ”

I feel like I've been around for such a long time, as a writer and as an artist, that I need to sort of speak to the way that my perception of the world has sort of changed. ”