Background Quotes

I'm a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I'd been in national competitions from the age of 14.

A lot of people don't realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

My father had a small Estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the Third of five Sons.

There's a lot of rednecks in the country where I grew up.

My father, Donald, came from Jamaica to study economics. My mother, Shyamala, came from India to study the science of fighting disease.

And I... started off dumb, raised by the hoodrats, listen to the radio wishin that i could rap.

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment - my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

I think I became funny because I grew up in the Bronx. I was small and weak and Jewish instead of large and fierce and Puerto Rican. You need something.

Of course I'm going to say "I'm a thug" that's because I came from the GUTTER and I'm still HERE!

I had to come from something, come from a place that was negative and positive but the majority of it is a negative place.

A lot of my own relatives didn't get to go to school because we were mountain people. You have to get out and work and help feed the family. My own dad couldn't read and write. And my dad was very proud of me.

My folks ain't graduated from high school or nothing like that, so we always had to struggle in the family - and I come from a big family.

We were totally opposite - me coming from the West Coast and a junior college, and him [ Christopher Reeve] from the hard-core Ivy League. He used to be the studly studly of all studlies, and I was the little fool ferret boy.

There's a lot of people talking about elitism and all of that.Yes, I went to Princeton and Harvard, but the lens through which I see the world is the lens that I grew up with. I am the product of a working class upbringing.

I didn't even complete my University Education

I started out in life with two great advantages: No money and good parents.