Q&A LUDACRIS

By Julie Rawe

Actor and Grammy winner Ludacris narrates the new girls' basketball documentary The Heart of the Game.

So does this mean you're a WNBA fan? I can't necessarily say I'm a fan, because I don't get to watch television. Period. I'm a fan of the NBA, but I don't even get to watch that.

This spring you went to the Oscars, the Kentucky Derby, the Indy 500 and the White House correspondents' dinner. You really get around. Yeah, man, life is a garden. You gotta dig it.

Which was more interesting: walking the red carpet at the Oscars or ringing the opening bell at NASDAQ? Walking the carpet. But don't get me wrong--I think I made history being the first rapper to ring the bell. I don't think I understood the importance of it until after I did it, so it didn't seem as exciting as everyone made it out to be.

You have an album coming out soon that mentions the beef you have with Oprah. I wouldn't call it a beef. I would call it a disagreement. I went to talk about Crash and racial discrimination, and I had my own Crash moment because Oprah was prejudiced against me because of my lyrics. She mentioned that I donated over $100,000 to Katrina victims, but that got edited out. But it was O.K. for everything that bashed me to stay in there.

You have five cars, but your favorite is your '93 Acura Legend? Yeah, it always brings me back to the mentality I had before I was a star. And it still runs the same way.