All-around 21st-century artist the great Kanye West at Design Miami/ Basel

Provenance is something very important in jewelry. You want to know who has worn a piece of jewelry and who it has belonged to - it's part of its history, part of its aura.

If you speak to young kids anywhere in the world, hip-hop is the music that they like to listen to more than any other type, so the influence simply cannot be underestimated.

While we do not need art to live, I couldn't imagine a life without it.

I think it's a tribute to the artistic importance of hip-hop culture and what hip-hop has brought into music and fashion and jewelry that it is being adapted or imitated or is inspiring variations or new types of art or new types of music.

I think imitation is always the greatest form of flattery.

In a way, there's nothing more intimate than a piece of jewelry. A painting is hung on somebody's wall. You put a piece of furniture in your home. But jewelry is worn by a person, so there is a fascination with the history of a piece.

There has always been a correlation between money and art.

I think there is going to be a whole market and we'll start to see hip-hop jewelry regularly in jewelry auctions around the world. Therefore, anybody who gets on the train early can only do well financially in the long run.

What I feel with the best of hip-hop music and with the best of what has been produced by hip-hop culture is that it's going to be timeless, and it's going to last.

I fell into hip-hop right from the beginning. I was a teenager in the '60s, so I was putting all my pocket money into buying LPs. I followed the ascent of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Stevie Wonder. I followed popular music very closely, and I've never stopped.