DJ Premier

“I'm not a tough guy, but I'll throw down just like the rest of them if I have to.”

“I'm a bass player and I'm a drummer - I'm a big fan of bass players.”

“I've been listening to Herbie Hancock forever. He's gone through so many transitions, even before bringing hip-hop to the forefront with 'Rockit' and everything.”

“All of our other albums were consecutive year after year: 'No More Mr. Nice Guy,' 'Step in the Arena,' 'Daily Operation,' 'Hard to Earn.' After 'Hard to Earn,' a four-year gap is a lot of not having Gang Starr music, as far as an album is concerned.”

“I'm passionate about music in general, not just hip-hop. But when it comes to hip-hop, I don't wanna see it die culturally.”

“If I feel like something needs to be updated, I'll break my neck to outdo the original.”

“I'm a big rock 'n' roll head, I love country music, I love yodeling music. But I'm still black and funky.”

“I'm not really a crying type.”

“My musical knowledge goes beyond hip-hop.”

“I like when people don't think I can pull things off.”

“If I gotta do a Jay-Z beat I want to stop everything. Tell everybody hold my calls, everything.”

“Guru was actually who A&R'd and got Lord Finesse signed because he used to listen to the demos at Wild Pitch. And he was the one who actually said, 'Yo, this Lord Finesse guy is dope.' And Stuart Fine signed him to Wild Pitch. That's how we became labelmates.”

“Travis Scott's dad was one of my OGs when I was a kid in Texas. Obviously Travis was nonexistent yet because his father wasn't even married back then.”

“Everybody deserves a piece of where they live, in some type of fashion. Music is just my way of preserving that.”

“The main thing is we never dissolved our Gang Starr contract. We are still signed to each other. We never disbanded the group. If Guru really wanted to super-dead it he would have said, 'Yo, I want out.' And I still would have tried to convince him to stay. We are still Gang Starr.”

“And hip-hop is about style and finesse and being creative and different, and to do that you have to be ballsy enough to not do what everybody else does.”

“Guru and I had a house in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, for a while and we used to have wild parties there when we weren't in the studio. It was like a fraternity house.”

“My mom's an art teacher, so I always had music in the house. She always had records, and I was mesmerized by the mechanics of how a turntable works.”

“I'm real particular about delivery. You can write the illest rhymes in the world, but can you deliver it right?”