Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.

My father's a preacher, my mother's a teacher, thus I rhyme.

I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.

More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry.

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written.