I started writing instrumentals but Roma pointed out they were very visual, so she started writing lyrics .. and Nicky had this idea of creating a wall of sound and started multi-tracking my voice.

"My inspiration for writing music is like Don McLean did when he did "American Pie" or "Vincent". Lorraine Hansberry with "A Raisin in the Sun". Like Shakespeare when he does his thing, like deep stories, raw human needs.

I'm trying to think of a good analogy. It's like, you've got the Vietnam War, and because you had reporters showing us pictures of the war at home, that's what made the war end, or that shit would have lasted longer. If no one knew what was going on we would have thought they were just dying valiantly in some beautiful way. But because we saw the horror, that's what made us stop the war.

So I thought, that's what I'm going to do as an artist, as a rapper. I'm gonna show the most graphic details of what I see in my community and hopefully they'll stop it quick.

I've seen all of that — the crack babies, what we had to go through, losing everything, being poor, and getting beat down. All of that. Being the person I am, I said no no no no. I'm changing this."

It began as research. I wrote of silences, of nights, I scribbled the indescribable. I tied down the vertigo.

For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.

A lot of my tracked music was written when I was very young, relatively speaking. I was very optimistic, I had finally discovered some sort of public musical outlet, it was generally a very happy time. So, the music of that time sort of reflects that, I think? By the time I started the Alpha Conspiracy project, I was older, a bit more sophisticated (and, well, cynical), and so the music got more complex.

I'm goin', what the fuck am I bustin' my ass for, doin' HBO specials, doin' fuckin' concerts, when I could just write rap songs? How hard is this shit to do?! Here's my first rap single: "Lick Me Where I Fuck and Pee". There it is! My first rap hit! 'Lick Me Where I Fuck and Pee!" I got a hit! That's where it's at! I got another song, for men, especially for men, in general: 'You Call That A Fuck, You Lazy Bitch?' Oh! OH! This song is gonna go through the fuckin' roof, trust me! We're talkin' about a song that's gonna go through the roof! They'll call me Grammy Sammy after that fuckin' song. Wait! I got another one! I got another one! 'Who Farted in My New Car?' You can't stop me! Fuck MC Hammer, 'You Can't Touch This'- YOU CAN'T STOP ME! I'm a rap song writing machine now, look out!

Writing [came] out of the situation that I was in, which was poverty, homesickness, being unskilled, uneducated. So out of that misery you begin to write things down. It wasn’t like: I’m writing a novel. But this kept growing, this stuff. Then it started to become ‘writing’ because you have to think and construct and shape and so on.

Like I say, the way I write songs is, you know, inspirational. I have to wait for it to happen. And when it happens I get lines, and I just write them down, you know. I'm not sort of a Tin Pan Alley sort of songwriter. I just sort of write down what I get - without censoring or questioning what it is and what it means, you know. Like later on I look at what it means, but not at the time.

I was born and raised in this intersection between Harlem and Columbia University. Very much what felt like in-between worlds. But in a very Dominican immigrant Black community. My journey begins with my listening to my parents tell me stories, and with listening to bolero music and listening to hip hop. I wanted to write music long before I ever considered myself a poet or a writer…

We write songs about wrong cause its hard to see right

On the project The Celts I was asked to ... to write a song. And, at the time I was ... arranging with Nicky, and writing the music and performing ... so, no desire whatsoever to write lyrics!... But Roma was actually writing poetry at the time, and she was involved, with listening in the studio ... being the audience in the studio ... so she was involved with the project. So, it was very obvious that she would write the lyrics.

What I have to say is all in the music. If I want to say anything, I write a song.

It just sort of happened. I wrote like what I'd always read and what was in the movies … I'm sure popular music is supposed to be like this.

One of my proudest credentials as a writer is to know that my poem “Child of the Americas” was plastered on bathroom walls in a small school in Michigan as graffiti, in an attempt to get people thinking about racism.