There are huge divorces and divides and chasms in black America between the have-gots and the have-nots, between the monied and the poor, between the educated and the non-educated. And there are huge and growing chasms daily. And I want to say that it's not simply about generation. It's about genre.

Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.

It is bad enough to be white and poor; it is worse still to be black, or brown, and female, and young, and poor. Simply said, race makes class hurt more.

I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand, to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.

I've always been comfortable thinking things through and doing it, more or less, my way. You can be as creative as you want, but if you're... unwilling to work on the details, to see those put into action, then creativity is just dreams, or worse, hallucinations.

I had a normal childhood where I was able to cultivate my own creativity, and I don't think I would have been ready for this crazy business at 8 years old.

I firmly believe that any good journalist must essentially be temperamentally an outsider. I don't think full sense of belonging and security is conducive to creativity.

Music. It's all creativity right here, right now.