Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.

The prison-industrial complex, poverty, and the school system has more effect on a young black male in America than Jay-Z does, by far. And that's not a diss to Jay-Z. The crime rate in the black community was high before hip hop. Rapping about it is just a reflection of the life a lot of people are living.

What I do isn't black music; it's just my music.

Hip hop is usually a bunch of guys talking to a bunch of guys, in my experience. It's homosocial, not homosexual, in that it's almost always all one gender in a room where it's being created. That locker-room environment has an impact on the language. I think the music suffers 'cause it allows an almost cartoonish level of misogyny.

I prefer black music in general.

London, London, London town,
You can toughen up or get thrown around.