Black Thought

“Everything I do has been a lifetime in the making.”

“I want to be at the top of my game.”

“We've always been a band that intentionally transcended race and age.”

“I think we could really play the Olympics.”

“Don't do anything for fear, because fear will never do anything for you.”

“Philly DJs sort of always won battles and always won awards and stuff like that and were always super sharp.”

“I got a family to take care of and kids to feed. That's my motivation, this is my job.”

“I love Trader Joe's.”

“For me, I'm a super private person.”

“For some music, lyrically, the best move is to keep it simple in what it is that you are saying, and just kind of come across in your rhythm and the way that you lock in on the music.”

“The Roots - we signed our first record deal when I was about 19 years old.”

“We're trying to plug a void and bring what's been missing back to hip-hop.”

“At this point, in 2008, if you put out a book, a movie, or write a verse, paint a painting, it should have some sort of social value.”

“Commercial success won't come to us from a change in the music. It will gradually be the result of a change in the appetite of the audience.”

“Nah, I don't feel overlooked, underappreciated, or none of that because it's a short list of artists, past and present, that I kind of have respect for. And in all of those situations, the admiration and respect is mutual.”

“The Roots brand is like the Lipton of hip-hop, so to speak.”

“My children have a world of opportunities that were not available to me. My kids have no idea about going without - there's no desire or need they have that hasn't been fulfilled, which is a blessing.”

“We've been branded 'the thinking man's hip-hop.' So the music's got to have some level of maturity.”

“In a lot of places Jay-Z is considered God, Philly, our hometown being one of them.”

“I feel like the youthful experience is what drives the creativity, and I feel like experience and maturity as an adult, experience as an elder statesman, that refines it.”