"I never thought I was the best rapper the best nothing'. I think I'm the realist nigga out there"
"If you walked by a street and you was walking a concrete and you saw a rose growing from concrete, even if it had messed up petals and it was a little to the side you would marvel at just seeing a rose grow through concrete. So way is it that when you see some ghetto kid grow out of the dirtiest circumstance and he can talk and he can sit across the room and make you cry, make you laugh, all you can talk about is my dirty rose, my dirty stems and how am leaning crooked to the side, u can't even see that I've come up from out of that"
"My music is not for everyone. It's only for the stong-willed, the [street] soldiers music. It's not like party music- I mean, you could gig to it, but it's spiritual. My music is spiritual. It's like Negro spiituals, except for the fact that I'm not saying 'We shall Overcome.' I'm saying that we are overcome."
"If you know in this hotel room they have food every day and I knock on the door. Every day they open tha door to let me see tha party, let me see that they throwin' salami, throwin' food around telling me there's no food. Every day. I'm standing outside tryin to sing my way in- "We are weak, please let us in. We're week, please let us in." After about a week tha song is gonna change to, "We're hungry, we need some food." After two, three weeks it's like "Give me some of tha food! I'm breakin down tha door." After a year it's like, "I'm pickin' the lock, comin' through the door blastin." It's like, "I'm hungry." You reached your level, you don't want any more. We asked ten years ago, we were askin' with the Panthers, we were askin' in the Civil Rights Movement. Now those who were askin' are all dead or in jail, wo what are we gonna do? And we shouldn't be angry!?"
"But I see now that whether I show up for work or not, the evil forces are going to beat me. They're going to come 100 percent, so if I dont be 100 percent pure-hearted, I'm going to lose. And thats why I'm losing."
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