"I love the fact that a West Coast pioneer took an East Coast approach to doing an album. Again, it's gangster to have a political opinion. He took that political incorrectness and made poetry out of it - to where again, it wasn’t 'Gangsta', it was 'Gangster'. I could appreciate that; I appreciate the business, not just random gunfire. There was a shock value to it. Gangsta rap now is just little kids talking shit; they’re going to get caught for their crime, they’re not being smart about their criminal activity. I like smart crime; white collar crime, but we’ve gone from the bosses making the music to the hit men."

"Godfather II, specifically number two. It was just what a gangster film should be. It was smart, it had great performances, and you travel through a lot of different worlds with these characters. You know, most people try to avoid family drama. [laughs] I just love the filmmaking in Godfather II."

"The ultimate existential gangster film. Hypnotic, detailed, ritualistic, it has influenced
 films like John Woo’s The Killer and the more recent Drive. Alain Delon
 gives his most memorable performance as an ice-cold assassin above such mundane
 concerns as moral conscience. Though violent in its subject matter, Jean-Pierre
 Melville’s film is also cool, meticulously lit, and classically framed. It
 operates in a kind of dream state. It’s the opposite of the fevered emotional style of
 most gangster films. The pauses and silences help make it the visual equivalent of Harold
 Pinter’s dialogue. This is my favorite Melville film, and the extras are among 
Criterion’s finest, including an interview with John Woo and one with Melville himself."

"Another film with Alain Delon. It’s interesting — probably he was my favorite actor when I was 16, and then I was a bit disappointed of how he changed when he became older. I guess also politically, but that doesn’t matter. As a young man, he played some very enigmatic and wonderful roles. Another favorite film of mine … It’s a genre film, Le Samourai, by Melville. It’s an incredibly cool gangster film. Just the opening, I think, is 20 minutes where not a word is spoken and you always see Alain Delon with his hat and his trench coat. It is just an incredibly stylish and aesthetically wonderfully shot genre gangster film. In German, it’s the Ice Cold Angel, but the Germans always have these funny titles."

"The Godfather was one of those movies where, you know, I didn’t realize what it meant back then when I was younger, and you love it because it’s so gangster, in a way — it’s just as gangster as it gets. But then as you get older you realize it’s about something bigger. The Godfather‘s about choosing business over family; you know [in Part II] when Michael kills his brother in the boat, and you realize what that choice was. It really stuck with me, you know, the bigger picture of what this country was built on and the choices that were made. So that movie I love. And obviously there’s the look of it and everything; that’s just a beautiful film in many ways."