These times are so hard, and they're getting even harder.

I'm stupid, I'm ugly, I'm dumb, I smell. Did I mention I'm stupid?

I might talk about killing people, but that doesn't mean I do it.

The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.

I don't hate women - they just sometimes make me mad.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

I come from Detroit where it's rough and I'm not a smooth talker.

When you're a little kid, you don't see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.

Before I was famous, when I was just working in Gilbert's Lodge, everything was moving in slow motion.

Say there's a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter - for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that's saying is that he's living a fantasy life of rebellion.

Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it's like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can't really speak on it, because I wasn't there. I don't feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

I want to solidify as an artist and show that as I grow as a person and make mistakes and learn from them, I'm going to grow artistically.

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you got your back turned.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I'm not putting a face on for the record.

I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There's no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape; that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all I love.

Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.

I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn't, then why would you say I am.

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

There was a while when I was feeling like, 'Damn, if I'd just been born black, I would not have to go through all this'.

My thing is this; if I'm sick enough to think it, then I'm sick enough to say it.

It sometimes feels like a strange movie, you know, it's all so weird that sometimes I wonder if it is really happening.

My father? I never knew him. Never even seen a picture of him.

To the people I forgot, you weren't on my mind for some reason and you probably don't deserve any thanks anyway.

It'd be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren't kids who look up to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I'm not a baby sitter.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

These times are so hard, and they're getting even harder.

I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I'm not ashamed of anything.

If there's not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

I always wished for this, but it's almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.

A lot of my rhymes are just to get chuckles out of people. Anybody with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I'm joking and when I'm serious.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I'm learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, 'I can't go to Kmart. I can't take my kids to the haunted house.'

Anything I've ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.

As for my stuff, I'm just doing guest verses for other people's records. I try to stay recording, because if I don't, I get rusty.

Being a student of hip-hop in general, you take technical aspects from places. You may take a rhyme pattern or flow from Big Daddy Kane or Kool G Rap.

Certainly I'm not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I'm a sponge. I've always been a sponge.

Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.

Five or six songs leaked from the original version of 'Encore.' So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

Guns are bad, I tell you.

Hip hop has always been braggin' and boasting and 'I'm better at you than this' and 'I'm better at you than that.'

Hip-hop is ever changing but you'll always have the pack. And you'll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It's the only thing I've ever been even decent at. I don't know how to do anything else.

Honestly, I never really put the mic down.

Honestly, I'd love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I'm doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I'm doing.