I feel like too many people on the West Coast, they're too needy. They feel they need Snoop or Game. I never did any tracks with any West Coast artists. Not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't feel like that's what I had to do in order to get on. I just did music.
For me, looking back is akin to being on a tightrope and looking down. It doesn't help you in the present moment to deal with what you have to deal with in order to move forward.
It is a law in the universe that a wave of spiritual awakening is always followed by a period of doubting materialism, each phase is necessary in order that the spirit may receive equal development of heart and intellect without being carried too far in either direction.
I studied law, economy, international relations, communications, in order to find what I would do. It's the hardest thing, being 17 and trying to find what to do in life. You've explored so little. I'm lucky: My parents let me explore.
I actually don't know anyone who wants to be famous for fame's sake, at least not anyone I respect. But you need to have a certain amount of power in order to be able to do what you want.
Sex IS power. Identity is power. In western culture, there are no nonexploitative relationships. Everyone has killed in order to live.
Despite crime's omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium.
Social justice and compassion are compatible with an intelligent respect for private enterprise and law and order.
Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt.
I am waiting impatiently for the day when beleaguered, like-minded academics can order James Wolcott's collected essays for their classes.