There is a long and interesting tradition of really marginal left-field music that becomes commercially successful. And I will, for a brief minute, fit into that tradition.
I really only started doing film in '97. I mean, before then, I just pretty much did theater.
Certainly, writing a book was challenging. It took me a long time to learn how to do it. It took me seven years to get a sense of how to wean myself off the process and trickery of songwriting. You realize that giant metaphors work in songs because you have so few words. Standing alone on a page, they threaten to be overblown in a hurry.
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 and it's time to expand and move on.
I think if I hadn't had the dance background, it would have been much harder as a kid to be like, 'I'm going to be an actress.' But you're involved with one area of the arts and other things interest you. It feels like an easier move.
I knew I wanted to be a writer at 13. Before that, I told everyone I was going to be an artist.
I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.
I'd come into filmmaking as a painter so, for me, making 'Good Will Hunting' was experimental because I didn't know how to do it.
We're not really an underground band anymore, and we're not a mainstream band, either.
When I got recognized as a writer, when I got the Emmy, I was more excited than the Emmys I had gotten as an actor.
After that I jumped, especially being in art school, to the illustrators.
When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.
When we did 'Eliminator,' at the time, it was experimental for us. It obviously turned out real successful, but at the time, we caught crap about it from some of our old fans. They thought we were deserting our roots or our old style or whatever.
The beauty of Broadway is that if I'm 60 or 70 years old, if they'll accept me back, I can go back. So I think for right now I'm going to focus on the music--it's the new baby--and see how it's going to work out, and then maybe in a few years maybe I'll go back.
I started out as a musician, and I ended up as a cartoon.
I was a dancer for about 20 years. It didn't really help me transition into music.
I like Kelly Rowland, I think that she's great. It's hard to come out of the group of Destiny's Child and still kick some butt.
I'm no longer an artist, I'm a business partner.
I had no intentions of going into sculpture but found that sculpture was just an extension of drawing.
When I came up, there was room for the new and the old. For every new artist, an old one didn't have to be pushed out.
I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously.
It's very strange for me to do a comic book for my first movie. But I used to collect - and I love - comic books.
There was a point after the whole intensity of the Clash finally subsided when I just found that painting grounded me in a way that music didn't.
I started in improv and went into different kinds of things.
Aly and I went through just a long period of time where we just didn't feel creative musically. And, you know, we went through the whole writer's block thing, and we went through having two pretty successful records and figuring out how we want to transition as adults.
