"I want to fight poverty and ignorance and give opportunity to those people who are locked out."
"I've been blessed to find people who are smarter than I am, and they help me to execute the vision I have."
"My experiences have been, from the very beginning, cultural and creative. And my business has been a way of exposing the culture, exposing the artists so that the world could hear and see them."
"I try to make my life about service, and hope that one day we can all 'see' a little better because God is with everyone and everywhere."
"I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens."
"I'm not a politician. I only want to help relieve the suffering in communities, and I want to help people see their community in each other."
"Art is a way to express yourself and through that you can escape a bad situation."
"Art allows people a way to dream their way out of their struggle."
"If you learn late, you pass it on to people so they can learn early. It's a step process."
"Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question."
"Last year my wife got a Rolls-Royce."
"Look at all the billionaires. If I know 15 billionaires, I know 13 unhappy people."
"Poverty and lack of knowledge must be challenged."
"The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized."
"Well, it's the last step of the civil rights movement: You know, wrap your hands around some money, right?"
"My little girls are the most beautiful women in the world. I am a lucky, lucky man. I will spend every day making sure that they know this."
"The conditions of suffering that exist today in our impoverished communities are not acceptable. The reflection of those conditions are less concerning to me. And I work everyday about changing the conditions."
"You know, the diversity that America has is so special. It's starting to really become a cool thing for young people."
"If you wake up deciding what you want to give versus what you're going to get, you become a more successful person. In other words, if you want to make money, you have to help someone else make money."
"Service is the key to everything in life."
"I think people instinctively know that their job is to give service and that they are part of a community. It had a great impact on me when my father walked the picket lines and I walked with him during the civil rights movement."
"Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you."
"I try to use my voice. I know that celebrity is valuable, and people do listen."
"I have 2 million Twitter followers. Some of those people are also yogis and activists and people who really go out and make a difference. I do as much as I can with my voice. It's effortless in some cases. I try to remind everybody that they have that kind of voice."
"I try to do things that I think are helpful to the environment, to the animals, and to the planet."
