I was an underground artist, but the underground status was successful. Coming from where I came from to see where rap is now, now artists are selling from a million to eight million copies.

You know, I got kids. I got sons, and I try to tell them, 'Look, man, when you in the car and you get pulled over, hands on the steering wheel. 'Yes, sir. No sir.' Your job is to either wind up in jail, so I can come get you, or be able to pull off. That's your job.'

I stick to my guns - that's what keeps me going as an artist. Stevie Wonder never changed from what he wanted to do, and each new album that came along was dope.

I started studying in '85 and got knowledge of self and started spitting. What was going on was taking the understanding of what I was reading and applying it with my life and applying it with my rhymes.

You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.

I got out of college and I went to get my master's in creative writing at San Francisco State. I was working as an actor at the Actor's Workshop, being abused as a intern.

I guess standup is really painting pictures with words - especially for me, as I describe quite fantastical, visual things. My art teacher, Dexter Dalwood, always seemed to think they were linked. We bonded over our love of Vic Reeves.

In art and music, particularly in the 20th century, there was a big period there where for something to be called profound you had to not be able to understand it.