You can't take -- unfalrly and unjustly -- your portion (of the planet), plus other people's portions away from them. It's a non-political issue. I don't think that should be an argument about that, it's an erroneous charge to say 'oh, (Pope Francis) is getting political because he's talking about the planet we live on.' Be serious!

Malik Yusef

Categorized in : Politics

The stories circulating that Kanye West's laptop has been stolen are completely false. His laptop has never been out of his possession. Hence, the laptop has not been hacked, and there has been no leak of personal data such as unreleased music, photographs, designs, videos or any other personal files. The leak today of the unreleased track 'Awesome' was unrelated and completely coincidental.

Malik Yusef

data track design

The poet's role has changed over the centuries, the ages. The poets, the griots, used to be the keepers of the facts; they were the story tellers, and the stories were allegorically written truths: where we came from, how we migrated over this river, got with this tribe, became this nation, and tamed the mountains. It changed from that to being purely entertainment. And once it became purely entertainment, it lost something.

Malik Yusef

mountain age rivers

I've broken it down to three basic types of people in gangs. You have the first type, the most dangerous, which are the glory seekers. They just want to be popular, they want to be stars, and they can do that in gangbanging. Then you have the one that I think is the worst, which is the one that's expected to be in the gang. Then you have the ones that were like me; they had to be.

Malik Yusef

stars people thinking

Being a father is the hardest job on the planet, because we don't have parental instincts like women have. You have to learn how to be a father before you even become a father, from a very young age. It's necessary to override what we're told in society a father should be, like if your son falls and scrapes his knee, you got to be tough. Baseball and all that are cool, but it's the tenderness and interactions that are really important. Boys are different; we have to impart that sensibility and that tenderness to them.

Malik Yusef

baseball jobs father

I thought about ancient times when we didn't have electric light. People were slaves to the ebb and the flow of the light cycle. Good Morning and Good Night represents one light cycle.

Malik Yusef

good-night light morning

Administrators tend to lump Asians in Chicago into one group, not understanding that these kids would be fighting each other, the Cambodians and the Vietnamese. We started a thing called cultural gift sharing, where everyone comes and says what his culture is, so the teachers and the administrators could understand they are different.

Malik Yusef

fighting teacher kids

So the only way I could stave off any of these assaults was to become a gang banger, and to excel, so I could quell the behavior. If I excelled, then I could call the shots. So I became a community leader from inside.

Malik Yusef

community leader way

You got to have dedicated people, a lot of dedicated folk. There's only so much one person can do. We really have to find people in our community that can give an hour a week. I was recruited because I started gangbanging at 12. I understand the structure; I understand the people inside.

Malik Yusef

community giving people

The normal kid can differentiate between various aspects of life, but a kid with dyslexia has to connect all those dots, and they have to link it like a chain. Teachers can't incorporate that. They don't have time; it's not their fault. They don't have the resources to give personal attention to each kid in the classroom.

Malik Yusef

teacher giving kids

With those organizations, it's like time travel. I just reach back and find little kids who were like me. Maybe the circumstances vary, but the formula is the same. They're having problems reading, having problems grasping some of the things that are being taught to them.

Malik Yusef

organization reading kids

They don't want art that might actually change the community. They just want consumers. They don't want people to manufacture things. They'll do the manufacturing, and they just need people to buy it, need youth to buy it.

Malik Yusef

community people art

It's all economic. Soda is easier to sell than orange juice because its costs less. Water, some coloring, some fizz, and this can, and we can sell this to you over and over and over again. And that's what rap is.

Malik Yusef

orange-juice rap water

I see myself as the oldest griot tradition of speaking to truth out here. There's a dark side that people don't even know is there.

Malik Yusef

dark sides people

I let them [Kanye and Pharrell] be them; they let me be me. I'm just a little boy that does poetry whose friends got famous, and I like it that way. I like to be found. I don't want to be overexposed. I love when people discover me and discover my music.

Malik Yusef

doe boys people

Police brutality has a long and carved history in America, the candidate that I'm going to choose is going to have this issue at the forefront of their mouth, as well as climate change.

Malik Yusef

politics

You have to take care of the earth, so it's a non-political issue, i don't think there should be an argument about that.

Malik Yusef

politics

I'm a Republican because that's where all my relationships are. The Republican Party is good for big business.

Malik Yusef

politics

Social conservatism is a moral choice. If you are pro-life, by all means be pro-life. But you can't legislate that.

Malik Yusef

politics

The phrase 'Black Lives Matter'— I really love that phrase because I feel like America for so long has not understood that.

Malik Yusef

politics

I like the aggressiveness of Bernie Sanders. 'Hey, this is what's happening I don't give a f--- what you think about it,'.

Malik Yusef

politics