WILL.I.AM

I was born and raised in the ghetto, on welfare, two minutes from homeless.

There's no chivalry in culture any more. Sometimes you meet someone who everyone says is polite and you're like, 'Wow,' but then it's like, 'Hang on, isn't everyone supposed to be polite?'

If my mind's not trying to fix something or create something, I don't know what to do. It just throws me off.

I go out partying to figure out exactly who I'm making music for. You can't just guess.

Electro is today's disco - making electronic music not for the sake of selling it but for sharing it and touring around the world D.J.-ing.

It should be mandatory that you understand computer science.

If you are a chef, no matter how good a chef you are, it's not good cooking for yourself; the joy is in cooking for others - it's the same with music.

When you follow your heart, you're never supposed to do things because of what you think people might say. You do it for the opposite reasons.

You can rule ignorance; you can manipulate the illiterate; you can do whatever you want when a people are uneducated, so that goes in line with corrupt business and corrupt politics.

Black Eyed Peas is a chameleon group.

The music industry isn't converging toward dance music. Dance music is dance music. It's been around since disco - and way before disco. But there's different versions of dance music.

I'm good at thinking outside the box, so much that you realise it's not a box to begin with.

When you're a corporation, you're going to stick with what works. That's why every McDonald's is the same.

Traveling in Europe made me understand that America has an island mentality: No one exists except us. There's a whole other world out there, but most Americans - all they know is America, the marketing plan.

I feel my personality is richer than my bank account. So if I meet a girl, maybe first she just likes me because I'm rich. But then she's gonna get to know me and say, 'Screw the money.'

If I didn't mould my reality then I'd still be in the ghetto where people like me are supposed to stay. You have to dream your way out of the nightmare.

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.

If you would ask my mom what books I liked growing up, I liked Dr. Seuss.

If you know how to freestyle, you will never have writer's block.

Music is my therapy and my straitjacket. Music keeps me sane and keeps my mind on something. It's fragile up there.

Hip-hop culture is probably one of the most powerful things to come out of America in a long time - everything from the music to the art to the dance to the language.

If you live in a good neighborhood, you drive home and there's a bank. There's grocery stores and big houses - but no motels. What that tells you psychologically is you protect your money and buy good things for your family to eat in your nice big house.

Hip-hop was fast, originally. It was always fast music.

There are five issues that make a fist of a hand that can knock America out cold. They're lack of jobs, obesity, diabetes, homelessness, and lack of good education.

I know people in gangs; I could have went down that route.