JPEGMafia: "We need true free thinkers, people who really say what they feel and have good, genuine intentions."

JPEGMafia: "Originally my entire goal with music was for it to be my job. When I sit down to make a beat, I wanna know that I'm gonna get paid from it, and that I can pay my bills and still have money left over to be a person."

JPEGMafia: "I'm very much a person of free thought."

JPEGMafia: "The idea of me being an icon or something is a very funny thing, just because of my own weird insecurities. But, yeah... probably because I toiled away being nothing for so long."

JPEGMafia: "I enjoy making music more than anything in the world. It's the only thing that it's felt the same since I was like 15."

JPEGMafia: "Liberals allow right-wingers on their platforms to have a 'civilized discussion,' but there's no reasoning with racists. I don't want them to have a platform that humanizes them. I want to talk down to them and meet them exactly where they are, with absolutely no respect."

JPEGMafia: "I am used to making people upset and uncomfortable with my lyrical content when it comes to music."

JPEGMafia: "I honed my craft in the military, because it's the only thing that got me through it, to be honest. Working on music - being able to come home and work on music whenever I got off - was essential. If I didn't have that, I probably would've lost my mind."

JPEGMafia: "I don't rely on the strength of my image."

JPEGMafia: "As a black person, I have two parties to choose from: liberal and conservative. If I choose to be a liberal - regardless of who I choose - I'm picking the lesser of two evils in my mind basically."

JPEGMafia: "Kendrick Lamar is 10-times the rapper I am, but I just feel I'm the best at getting my own point across."

JPEGMafia: "For me, sampling is a high art. Most people don't see it that way, but it's a beautiful thing. I wouldn't know anything about music if it wasn't for samples."

JPEGMafia: "I'm always just gonna do whatever I want. I don't feel any pressure to appeal to anyone in particular."

JPEGMafia: "If Kanye was not in the equation, I literally wouldn't even be here. His music pushed hip-hop - the man is a master at taking a complex idea and presenting it in a way that is accessible for everyone."

JPEGMafia: "Punk is all about doing what you want and being yourself. And that's what rap is too."

JPEGMafia: "Either people cling to the past and refuse to advance their ways, or they're always looking to future and not appreciating what's in front of them right now."

JPEGMafia: "I'd rather be dead than work in a warehouse."

JPEGMafia: "I don't know if there's anything Kanye West can do that can erase his influence on me, because it's here. It's already there. He can't even reverse that himself, because it's just so ingrained in me."

JPEGMafia: "Whoever likes my music, I'm gonna reciprocate that same love back to them. I'm not trying to alienate anybody."

JPEGMafia: "I'm aware that if I make a country album and release it, and it gets on the Grammys, the Grammys are going to put it in the Urban category. Just my blackness automatically sets it in there."

JPEGMafia: "I'm not some patriot. I didn't have some yearning to defend my country or anything. I was poor."

JPEGMafia: "America to me is where I grew up: in Brooklyn, around other black and Latino people who helped and loved each other. I just want to show people that America doesn't have to be this 'I'm in the NRA, blah blah blah' type of place."

JPEGMafia: "The U.S. army is pretty terrible. Never join it!"