Growing up, the one thing I noticed was that everyone seemed to laugh at my jokes wherever I went.

I've always been totally enamored by hip-hop. I wouldn't say I liked it exclusively growing up. It was, like, that and alt-rock. But I always preferred it. It set a tone for everything I wanted to do in life.

I spent two years making music in San Francisco for my first mixtape. Initially, I was not at all doing this to be a professional rapper, a touring rapper. I didn't think I had that talent level in me.

My whole initial goal was to be a comedian, so it's not like I chose to do a TV show out of nowhere. It's kind of always been goal to do a TV show.

We were using the record as a tool to invest money into real estate all through the South, because we were living in an era where the South was changing.

I don't pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.

Conversations about money, culture, power, class - it's at the center of my identity. I think it's a combination of being born to immigrant parents, growing up relatively poor, and really living in a world where formal institutions, like banks and anywhere that you had to sign a contract, was really feared and avoided at all costs.

When we talk about 'Sweetback,' yes, it stars the whole black movement, but it's also the first time an independent film made that kind of money and was that successful and taken seriously.