My Umi Said Shine Your

I'm Really Quite Bipolar, And The Depressed Times, When Everything Felt Like Night, Sometimes You Get To Such A Low Point That You Physically Beat At It Until It Bleeds - As You Would Say - Bleeds Till Sunshine. You Get To A Point Where You Say, 'i Will Not Take It Anymore! I'm Gonna Do Something Drastic If I Stay This Depressed. I've Got To Break Out Of There!'

I Just Don't Think It's Very Dignified To Ask People To Like You. You Can Just Wind Up Being Somebody's Ottoman.

Twitter Freaks Me Out. You Have Followers? It Feels So Obsessive And Proprietary.

It's Difficult To Really Be An Artist Nowadays. People Are Just On Another Page. You Have A Society That Needs You To Say Something, But They Don't Want To Give You The Environment To Be Able To Be Just A Functioning, Happy, Normal Person. It's Like, The Industry Is At Odds With You, The Society Is At Odds With You. You Start To Live In This Very Confined Box Where It's Like, It's "me" And "them."

Mos Def Is A Name That I Built And Cultivated Over The Years, It's A Name That The Streets Taught Me, A Figure Of Speech That Was Given To Me By The Culture And By My Environment, And I Feel I've Done Quite A Bit With That Name. [but] It's Time To Expand And Move On.