Hip-hop is really standoffish. It's really competitive and it's really about who's number one all the time. Sometimes it gets out of hand.
I remember when it was just the three Emcees and then Flash put Mr Ness down.
MCs are authors, and rock musicians who write lyrics are authors, to a degree.
When the generation after me started getting on the cut, a lot of them would call me over to hang out or go jam and scratch and they were always separate from each other.
I grew up with park jams. That's how I knew about rap... The local MCs would grab the mic and start rapping. I just used to be so in awe and fascinated and like, 'Wow, this is amazing!' But I would never, ever touch the mic. Heck no.
Grime's always been big at festivals. Grime's always had an underground crew.
When you start rhyming, it's hard to find things that rhyme with Yauch, Horovitz and Diamond.
I've never been massive on rap, but there's that whole kind of culture of U.K. rap.
Pretty much my feel toward MCs is, if you really got heart, you got passion, let's get on and do something. I like doing stuff with people that's real.
Everybody nowadays rhymes, but out of the people that really, really do it well, it's still a small community of artists. We all tend to be in the same circles - people like my Wu-Tang brothers, or Black Thought from The Roots.
Grime is now a very talkable subject.
People can't look down on grime anymore, it's an established British genre.
When I was doing research on the M.C.s and spending time with these cats, one of the things that struck me and made me realize that I could deliver this world to an audience was their really dark and acute sense of humor.
I think the hip-hop purists are purists through and through. They're here to criticize all of us. That's just how it is. We as MC's criticize each other. That's the nature of hip-hop.
My era was '90s Carhartt-and-Timberlands hip-hop. That's my rock n' roll.
I love the grimiest rappers in the world. That's my favorite.
The cats that are doing they thing, you have to search to really find them, to find rappers that can actually rap and speak messages in the music. That's not a good thing at all.
I can't listen to rap music; it's not my thing. They say that they're the modern poets: of course they are, but it's not for me.
The best rappers I know are, like, air-conditioner men.
Today's Baudelaires are hip-hop artists.
I think the grime scene is one of the sickest, most diverse scenes ever.
DMX - everything this brother spits is hot. Everything. This is the heat right here. When I stand next to MCs, this is who I wanna stand next to.
Everything's pretty consistent in the industry, you know. There's a couple of naysayers, whatever, people who don't agree. But for the most part a lot of people believe in the new class of MC's that coming to the game.
Rap has always had a braggadocios flavour to it. That goes all the way back to 'Rapper's Delight.'
Nas is truly one of the greatest lyricists to ever come out of Queens, which has produced more great MCs than any other borough. He's one of the greatest MCs of my lifetime and in the world. He's also a friend.
