"I was a John Peel listener like anyone who had any taste, any lonely soul - there were a lot of us and it was great when we all got together. He played this. I'd never heard anything like it. It was around that period after the Mexico Olympics and the Black Power protest and to this day, surely, this must be the first hip-hop record, not in terms of its music composition but in terms of the content. Everything is there. It is supreme. I wanted to know more about it, so I went out and bought some books - Soul On Ice, Seize The Time, all those things. That's really powerful. John was never quite as bumbling as he liked people to think."

"I went to see this at Film Forum (thankfully not defunct) with my husband, Ira, and my mother several years ago. Before she died, the three of us used to go to the movies together, which was in and of itself a white-knuckle experience. My mom was a vocal spectator at the movies. Sighing, gasping, moaning, even uttering words of advice or disdain to the screen were not beyond her. It was often embarrassing. Even the most vapid milquetoast piece of crap could get a rise out of her. (She had discerning taste—after all, she loved Buñuel—but movies just made her emotional.) This film is not vapid, milquetoast, or remotely crappy—far from it. Between her and the movie, I was a wreck."