When I come around people, I'm up to date on everything. I know all the new music that's coming out, all the stuff that ain't came out yet.

I don't live in the past or focus on making new songs sound like my old stuff; it would be stupid, and I don't think anyone would like it.

If a person's around me talking about '92, or 2005, I get away from them quickly. I don't want to be around anybody talking about the past.

Rap ain't out there for everybody; everybody can't be a rapper. Everybody can't be a singer; anybody can't just be a songwriter, but it may - there's some profession out there you can be in.

I was raised in a very religious home with two parents who were deeply involved in the black church. When I was young, I went to a small black AME church in New Jersey.

Oh wow, you know what's wrong with all these families on TV? All these kids say stuff no kid would say. Stuff grown-ups want them to say. Man, I'd make a really realistic family. Where kids get spankings. On TV parents say, 'Oh, you shouldn't do that ever again. Now you can have ice cream.' Forget it.

You know, my dad wasn't a photographer or filmmaker by profession, but on Sundays, he would take pictures of me and my family or his pals horseback riding, and it was a means of communication and affection, a means of not being so dysfunctional with each other.

Hinde Esther Singer was born in Poland on March 31, 1881, the daughter of Bathsheva and Pinchos Mendel Singer. Bathsheva was an intellectual, but both Bathsheva's father and her husband disapproved of erudite women.