I want to invite the mainstream into my world and to my sound and to what I’m doing. And I want mainstream artists to respect me and accept Latino artists as equals without us having to sing in English. I want them to know that I can compete globally, with whomever, in Spanish.

I want mainstream artists to accept Latino artists as equals without us having to sing in English.

Over the years the political establishment has frowned if a mainstream politician mentions marriage.

I think maybe since there isn’t a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don’t understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out.

If there are political programs on TV, yet it takes an artist to actually energize political debate, that tells you something really quite frightening about the level of the political debate happening on mainstream channels – right-wing-biased mothers

I don’t see it in terms of changing things, but rather using language and music as weapons for fighting a mainstream media which is predominately right wing, and loyal to the political framework and its corporate interests

And it’s always the same kind of artist, I think, who has more enjoyment being slightly on the outside of things, who doesn’t want to be sucked into the tyranny of the mainstream. Because once you get sucked into that, you’re dead as an artist.

I think artists should be able to do different things whenever they want and I like the way I am. I’m like – I ain’t gonna say the only street rapper, but the only mainstream, new, young street rapper there is right now and I’m doing well with it.