Growing up in bad neighborhoods, you see and experience a lot.

Anything that Havoc or I do is always going to point back to Mobb Deep.

Our first name was the Poetical Prophets before we changed it to Mobb Deep, and when I look back on it now, that was, like, a ill name for us because that is what we really were.

A sickle-cell attack would creep up slowly in my ankles, legs, arms, back, stomach, and chest. Sometimes my lips and tongue turned numb, and I knew I was going into a crisis.

The art of the three-minute song is more like journalism than writing a big 400-page book. You want to be brief, you want to make sense right yen and there. And sometimes that takes a bit of work.

I've always had a lot of creative impact on the music with Timbaland.

Creativity is an energy. It's a precious energy, and it's something to be protected. A lot of people take for granted that they're a creative person, but I know from experience, feeling it in myself, it is a magic; it is an energy. And it can't be taken for granted.

I'd just sort of gravitated toward the arts, and I had always loved music and really loved theater, even though I didn't want to act. For some reason, being in Kansas, you can either be a graphic artist or a visual artist, so I decided, 'I guess I'm going to be a painter.'