“Kwame Ture opened my eyes to what happened to the black power movement and who was a fraud and who was a snake. But more than anything else he taught me that we are all human. That’s when we formed H.E.A.L. (Human Education Against Lies). A few years later, I followed my teacher all the way to his deathbed when Kwame Ture was at Minister Farrakhan’s house dying of prostate cancer. I kissed him and he smiled at me. He gave me an elder’s hug where you can feel the spirit leave him and go into you. You can’t front after that. I can’t blame an artist who never knew a Martin Luther King or a Marcus Garvey or a Kwame Ture personally. There’s no ‘you’ with that. There’s no ‘I’ anymore. All you remember is your teacher, that deathbed and your mission.We were able to get some great names on the H.E.A.L. record: Big Daddy Kane, MC Lyte, Kid Capri, Queen Latifah, Freddie Foxx, and LL Cool J. After Run-DMC weren’t allowed to be on ‘Self Destruction,’ Jam Master Jay tells me, ‘Okay…no problem. If you do another record like ‘Self Destruction’ call Run-DMC personally.’ And they were able to do the H.E.A.L. project; Jay and DMC came through for us! But Run didn’t show up. When it came time to shoot the video, however, LL wasn’t allowed to be in it. So again, when some rappers weren’t allowed [to appear in the video for ‘Heal Yourself’], this is just part of hip-hop’s history.”