Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I didn't ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that's exactly what I've gone and done
I didn't ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that's exactly what I've gone and done.
What I'm aiming to do within hip-hop is to point out that the music itself is powerful; it reaches so many people.
It was always important to me to be that kid who could rock the party as well as rock the English professor's mind.
I'm usually trying to get back into the dream or analyzing the dream. And yeah, the days, most days begin like that.
Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into.
'Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into.
There is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch than by censoring the leaves.
What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves.
I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions.
You can travel through literature, and you can expand your mind through literature. It's so cheap to buy that kind of ticket.
Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.
When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyle atop some crumbling building, spring to life a resuscitated angel.
I was fed by the music I listened to as a kid. Hip-hop fed me psychologically, spiritually, politically. I learned from that music.
The most powerful political voices are those with a different way of seeing and processing the world and the sounds that emanate from it.
Sometimes our thoughts and feelings are our most prized possessions... and then there are times to let go of your possessions and wander.
Art can play a major role. I look at art as an alternative source of energy, the same way we might look at wind or solar or lithium batteries.
I think it's misleading to think that art is only there for escapism, only there for our dreams of being rich and f - king whoever we wanna f - k.
There's no doubt in my mind that 'Slam' is going to be huge. It's a film about the power of language. People are going to see this and get blown away.
I spend my time sitting in train stations, parks, parking lots, cafes, just looking at people - eavesdropping, basically. I'm vulnerable to all of it.
You change the beat up, you might change the way people dance to the music. If you change the way they move, maybe they'll think about it differently.
i am like a survivor of the flood walking through the streets drenched with God surprised that all of the drowned victims are still walking and talking
There's so much to be found in literature, especially if you don't have the money to travel or the means to get out of your neighborhood or get off work.
I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the 'black people's CNN.' Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect.
I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the "black people's CNN." Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect.
i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots
The MC that we love are usually the ones that we consider be kinda heartless, like 50 Cent. That's pretty much the prowess and power of an MC. That's what sells.
I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal.
Punk rock meditation, that's what keeps it going. That's how I let go, you know. It's exactly what I do, I blast it and run around crazy banging my head on the wall.
I surrendered my beliefs and found myself at the tree of life injecting my story into the veins of leaves only to find that stories like forests are subject to seasons
I think that the heart is a lot like those wonderful fruit, like coconut and mangoes, you know, you have to break the skin, you have to break it open to get to the good part.
If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct.
I'm somewhat of an empath, I would say. I relate easily to ideas and stories, books, films, music. I'm moved by all of these things. Art in general. But not just art, you know?
I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate, because it defines our limitations.
The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community.
Half of the popcorn sh-t that's out there, we know it's popcorn. But we're like, "It's my guilty pleasure." I feel like we have more guilty pleasure than actual f - kin' pleasure.
I want to connect music to its highest power - which is heightening consciousness and affecting people's reality. That can't be done in normal ways, not according to my experience.
For all the ghosts and corpses that shall never know the breath of our children so long for the sacrifice and endurance of our mothers and the sustained breath of our fathers we live
I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read.
It's crazy when you see very little reflection between what's played on the radio and what people are talking about in the streets. It lets you know how far off we are from a real movement.
Your library teacher would say, "What happens to a generation that doesn't read the Classics?" Me, I'm not your library teacher. But I have some of the same questions and concerns, you know?
I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance, Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.
I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression.
It's not the rules everywhere, you know? That's not the rules everywhere - that things have to be dumbed down in order to become massively popular. And that hasn't always been the rule, even in America.
When I finally decide that I'm ready to get out of bed, it could be the sunlight, it could be the fact that I'm awake, and, OK, first of all, I wake up in the morning because I have to go to the bathroom.
I am hoping for peaceful transition into a new age. Obama has already played a great role in initiating us into that vision. If he were to be harmed in any way, it would spawn the birth of a million Obamas.
We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didnt walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.
We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didn't walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.
I think art can really serve to inspire a movement - and, of course, it has in the past. The Civil Rights movement wouldn't have the same resonance without the songs from everyone from Pete Seeger to Odetta to James Brown.
When I look at certain aspects of popular culture - not everything because I like a lot of things - sometimes my heart breaks a little bit, just a little bit. I begin to ponder what happened to this generation, I don't know.