I tell you, there are no big shots in reality, y´all

We´re all in the same boat, dealing with the same issues, same problems, same stuff. Don´t even buy it. All the perpetration... you know, all this... "We don´t have problems." That´s a lie. That´s a lie. I know that the enemy is doing the same thing to me that he´s doing to everybody else. I just know now that the only way to get out is through confrontation. See, we always thought it was retreat, you know, run away. And I´m telling you, you got to confront it

This is a strange song because this song -- when this song was written, this is when everything sort of stopped. It was written a long time ago, but it was right before God just snatched me out of everything. And because I didn´t understand... Initially it was written -- I´d written it about the whole Amadou Diallo situation, when it first happened. And I went to the studio, and I laid it down. And it was like, strong, for the first day. And then it just regressed everyday after that. And I said, "What´s going on? What´s happening?"

And at the end of it there was a word that i used, "rebel." And I guess was afraid. It was such a hot time in the city at that point, I was afraid that if I
Put the record out, people would misunderstand what I meant by "rebel" and they´d just take it to the streets. So I was very intimidated and afraid. And before I knew it a whole host of things happened. Everything stopped after that. And the creativity stopped. Everything stopped. That´s when I realized I had to understand what I was talking about before I could tell somebody else what I was talking about. And I had to be, you know, a living example

It´s real crazy because I don´t know what the press is saying because I don´t listen to the press too much. But I know the view is that I´m emotionally unstable, which is reality. Like you aren´t?

I´m laughing because what I´ve realized I´ve become is one of those mad scientists who does the tests on themselves first, you see, to make sure that they work. And that´s when you know, OK look, I got something that works. You know what I´m saying? I´m not gonna give you something that I haven´t tested for myself. And you go through, and you´re learning by way of experience, and you´re making mistakes, and you´re getting up

A friend of mine once said to me, he said, Look, if we weren´t supposed to turn around, why does a car have a steering wheel? Are we just supposed to crash into the wall? No, we´re supposed to say, Listen, I was going the wrong way... Reverse!

In this particular song, now I realize that this song is about freedom. You see? We could look at one human being, but it´s about the spirit of freedom being taken out, and how it´s taken out in all of us

The song is called "I Find It Hard to Say." Bear with me a little bit