I’ve got an extra-specific story about Dr. Dre. I saw him when I was 9 years old in Compton – him and Tupac. They were shooting the second ‚California Love‘ video. My pops had seen him and ran back to the house and got me, put me on his neck, and we stood there watching Dre and Pac in a Bentley.

I would love to work with Eminem, Dr. Dre. I wish I could have been in the studio with Bob Marley.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

One day, I’ll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it’s nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.

You don’t hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

No rapper in the world from Jay-Z to Tupac to Biggie has 100 percent love on everything they do.

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

When I was a kid at four years old, that’s when I started amateur wrestling with my dad and family. And when that’s instilled in you, it never goes away.

Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem, Big L, Tupac. That was, like, my top five, generally.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

My father was a great sympathizer of Ahad Ha’am. Every Friday night we would read Hebrew together, and often the reading was Ahad Ha’am’s essays.

When I went back to my old high school, all these kids looking at me like I’m the real big homie, the same way I look at Jay Z, Nas, or Dr. Dre. You would’ve thought Michael Jackson walked through that joint off the excitement that they had.

It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.

I do say things that I think will shock people. But I don’t do things to shock people. I’m not trying to be the next Tupac, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this planet. So while I’m here, I might as well make the most of it.

I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

My parents were fairly young in the city of Compton. So the things that they played – you know, that was the hip crowd. So I was being exposed to all these ideas, from Big Daddy Kane to Eazy-E to the Bay Area – Too Short, E-40 – you know, back to Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers.

I went to see ‚Phantom of the Opera‘ with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music… Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time – the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.