# Quote

1 (2013) It's always weird when people approach me to make an investment. I tell them, "I don't need any more money. I'm good." Then I wait for their expression. That part is entertaining, because people look at you like you're crazy when you say you don't need any more money. Who says that?

2 (2013) I've gone seventy-nine hours without sleep, creating. When that flow is going, it's almost like a high. You don't want it to stop. You don't want to go to sleep for fear of missing something.

3 (2013) My mother got pregnant with me at the age of fifteen. This was '64, and unheard of at that time. She was told, "You're fucking your life up. You won't be shit-and your kid won't be shit." Everyone was trying to convince her to get an abortion. She wouldn't. So it was always embedded in my head as a child that I have to be a success, because those people cannot be right.

4 I believe in reincarnation, and I believe I've lived quite a few lives. I was at this party and there was this psychic, this little old lady with a flower in her hair. I don't believe in that stuff. I'm the biggest skeptic. But, hey, it was a party, and I decided to sit down with her. She looked right through me, kind of freaked me out. She did past-life regression. She started telling me things that I really believe. She's telling me that I've been back several times before. She says, "This is the last time you have to come back. You don't have to come back anymore if you don't want to." I was taking it as entertainment. But something inside me was saying, Hmmm.

5 (2013) I don't even listen to the records after they come out. It's outlawed in my house. My wife and my kids can't play any of my music around me. Once it comes out, for me, it's just business. Numbers.

6 I'm gonna try and change the course of hip hop again.

7 In fact, I would advise against anyone doing reality shows. I won't be doing 'X Factor' just yet.

8 Mission accomplished, we didn't have any problems as far as violence goes.

9 Before now, I've always taken my mixes out to the car and listened to them in the parking lot. I still do that, but more so now I'm listening to it on the Beat box, and I think people should give it at least a listen and check it out and see what it is.

10 Anyone that's trying to do something to improve sound... that's all good.

11 I'd rather deal with Tipper than Bush. He's trying to kill everybody in jail.

12 I had fun doing it, but acting ain't really my thing. I am more of a production/director type. I would rather be behind the scenes and organizing and putting things together like that.

13 Engineering and mixing are absolutely key. Once a song is done, for me personally, it's usually two or three days to get the mix down.

14 When the ideas are coming, I don't stop until the ideas stop because that train doesn't come along all the time.

15 I always loved the way music made me feel. I did sports at school and all, but when I got home, it was just music. Everybody in my neighborhood loved music. I could jump the back fence and be in the park where there were ghetto blasters everywhere.

16 Black women are the strongest most hardworking people on earth.

17 I just want to get my music out and make sure that it's heard in the right way.

18 I've looked at pictures that my mom has of me, from when I was four years old at the turntable. I'm there, reaching up to play the records. I feel like I was bred to do what I do. I've been into music, and listening to music and critiquing it, my whole life.

19 When I think of the future, I think a lot of Quincy Jones and how he is an inspiration. Look at the quality of his work over so many years. He didn't even make his best record, 'Thriller,' until he was 50. That gives me something to look forward to. Nothing pulls you back into the studio more than the belief that your best record is still ahead.

20 People are always coming up to me, thinking I've got some magic wand that can make them a star and I want to tell them that no one can do that. Making hit records is not that easy. But it took me time to realize that myself.

21 You got to realise that when I was 20 years old, I had a house, a Mercedes, a Corvette and a million dollars in the bank before I could buy alcohol legally.

22 I am never going to give music up.

23 I'm never gonna stop music, it's like air to me.

24 The only two things that scare me are God and the IRS.

25 [about the misogyny in his songs) Black women are the strongest, most hardworking people on earth. The shit I talk on records about black women is just that: shit.

26 I got Ice Cube his start. I also launched Eazy-E. There ain't no question that NWA became what it was in large part because of my music and my producing. Me and Eazy had agreed from Jump Street that we was to be partners. Now Eazy says he's the owner of the record company, Ruthless. Well, let him own it then. But I was never supposed to be signed to him or owned by him.