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.

I'm just one woman away my mother from being the same as Mike Tyson. I would've ended up like him if my mama had not been so tough and strong. A lot of people including Mike don't know I came from the ghetto. They think I'm too nice and proper. But that's the way my mama raised me - to look people in the eye and respect them.

I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate because it defines our limitations.

The great moments of rock 'n' roll were never off in some corner of the music world in a self-constructed ghetto.

There's so little money in my bank account my scenic checks show a ghetto.

Do not ghettoize society by putting people into legal categories of gender race ethnicity language or other such characteristics.

Why shouldn't rap be esoteric able to take in current events history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers because they're black can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence.

A great wind swept over the ghetto carrying away shame invisibility and four centuries of humiliation. But when the wind dropped people saw it had been only a little breeze friendly almost gentle.

If you live in a ghetto and really want not to just change your life and your family's life but change your ghetto's life make your ghetto a good neighbourhood learn science try to be like Mark Zuckerberg Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

A great deal has been written in recent years about the purported lack of motivation in the children of the Negro ghettos. Little in my experience supports this yet the phrase has been repeated endlessly and the blame in almost all cases is placed somewhere outside the classroom.