The breaking point was to stand outside on 116th Street and have five cabs pass me up.

The points leader (Ferris) had nothing for me. Once I got outside, I was gone.

It was a ragtag street ensemble, ... Literally, we'd pass the hat. I learned how to breathe fire. I learned to play the trombone. I was a street musician for years.

When you've moved past a point where you're just scrambling for jobs, you think about the things that you want to do. And the things that you want to do are governed by what you've seen, what you choose to embrace.

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

Every day of my life I walk with the idea that I am black, no matter how successful I am. And our success is tempered by that; you're successful in this way given the fact you are black, and most blacks don't get to that point.