I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor.

Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.

I think artists can influence only through making music that challenges people, excites them and flips them out. Music that repeats what you know in ever-decreasing derivation, that's unchallenging and unstimulating, deadens our minds, our imagination and our ability to see beyond the hell we find ourselves in.

You know, I look to myself mainly as a creative writer all my life and a medical doctor.

There's no such thing as 'sissy bounce.' We don't separate it here in New Orleans at all. It's just bounce music. Just because I'm a gay artist, they don't have to put it in a category or label it.

I can't satisfy myself with just trying to tie all of my imagination into music, especially when music is not appreciated as an art form as much as it used to be.