I created this picture of this character who would play the guitar effortlessly, who had no limitations, performing beautiful music, and he moved around with great acrobatic skills, just capturing the audience and being a great entertainer.

Music is powerful. As people listen to it, they can be affected. They respond.

If I focus on being an activist and my job is to be a rapper, I'm not going to be as good of a rapper. I need to focus on hip-hop and focus on making the music, so that when the activists come to me and they need my voice to create a platform, then I've got enough people listening to me. Not because I'm conscious, but because I'm dope.

Art is a form of experience of the person, the place, the history of the people, and as black people, we are different. We hail from Africa to America, so the culture is mixed, from the African to the American. We can't drop that. It's reflected in the music, the dance, the poetry, and the art.

People forget themselves in my music. It's amazing.

I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.

I never understood why movies don't have to be as responsible, or the responsibility stops with Rated R. I feel like music, you gotta - you put the sticker on it, you make the clean version, then you're explaining yourself, and then you have to do charities to offset what you just said. No one else has to do this!

I've always loved space in music, when songs are allowed to breathe and aren't muddied or weighed down by unnecessary production elements.

Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left.

Being famous is having the power to really implement positive change in the world, and it gives you the power to do what you want. I'm really grateful for it because I can play music and people will listen.