Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I wasn't a kid when I came out. Soulja Boy was 16. I'm saying that when he came out he was a kid so it was naturally a show for him. It's not about the music right away. It's a show for him. Not that he's not putting enough effort into his music, but how much effort can a 16 year old put into his music because as you mature and get older even the songs he's doing now has evolved and he's looking back.
Usually I will hear a sample, think of a theme and then it will take me a couple of days to write down some lyrics. Then I will decide that I hate those lyrics and rewrite. Then I will change all the music around. Then I will rewrite all the lyrics again. I am a bit of a perfectionist although you would never know it because all my songs are like chopped up and @#$%& up, but you see that's on purpose.
There's a secret government out here. It's been functioning since the beginning of time, and their whole job is population control. A lot of it is racist, so their target black people and minorities. People need to watch out for that, pay attention to how they're tryin' to change laws, and they're tryin' to control the world. They don't want just America or Europe any more; they want the entire globe.
I can't compare my life growing up in Leimert Park to someone in Imperial Village Projects; we don't have the same options and I understand that. You do what you do based on survival and instincts. If I know something, I try to share it and give that opportunity and enlightenment to whomever I'm around, some people might not want to hear it but once you know something, you have the option to do better.
I want to be the bridge. I embrace it. I don't mind being a leader. I don't mind opening the doors. I guess my prayer is that there will be other leaders behind me who will come in and do more than what I've done, and more than what I can do and that this serves as an opportunity to level the playing field in hip-hop. I just want to be able to say "Hey, there's way more going on in life than the club."
I didn't set out like, "I'm gonna do this album, and I really want a #1 album." So it wasn't even on my mind like a goal to accomplish... but as soon as it sunk it that it was an accomplishment, I realized I gotta start acknowledging milestones [I've] accomplished because sometimes you get so caught up in the bigger picture that you gotta stop and notice the steps you take to get to the bigger picture.
I want to be remembered as one of the illest, youngest cats to do it successfully and to keep doing it successfully. My early story alone deserves to be told, because at 6 years-old I was discovered by one of the best producers of all time, Dr. Dre, and I went on tour at 6, and appeared on Snoop Dogg's album at the age of 7. And I'm still here. Nobody else has a story like that, and it has to end great.
If you want to speak about different ethnicities and diversity, rap and hip-hop are all over the planet. Every country, from Turkey to Australia, now has tons of hip-hop artists. The music and artistry have moved way faster than the corporatization of the music. You do need organization and opportunity for these artists to express themselves, and I don't think it has to come from a corporate co-signing.
The only struggle came from me wanting more for my family and feeling like if they had one less individual to take care of - if my mom only had her and my sister and my grandmother and my aunt to take care of, couldn't she do the things she was doing for me for herself? That's the reason I took myself away from my family. I left home when I was 13 years old to assume the responsibilities of being a man.
Hip hop is expression..our roots and culture..Its your duty to contribute uniqueness to this artform. Desire of bringing somethin new, improved, witty and soul touching is what bein an m.c. is all about. I wanted my intelligence to be heard in my lyrics..I wanted the pain to be felt...and the happiness i encountered. Bein an m.c. takes originality, style, imagination, delivery, intelligence and presence.
I always like to say, I am to most phenomenal thing that touched men kind...lol, lol. Yeeaa Men.. Besides that, I don't eat a lot; I don't eat a lot of carbohydrates. I am just naturally big like this, that's all. That's just something I do, if people see me on stage they are always like "man, that dude is huge". I mean I am in a good shape, I don't drink or smoke, so there are a lot of things I don't do.
I'm so blessed to be breaking through right now because, how do you break through now? It took a clothing line to make people recognize me, you know what I mean? So the next kid that doesn't have that opportunity what is he suppose to do? It's really hard to break through right now. You just have to keep dreaming and keep pushing and take those right opportunities. I can't express that enough. It's crazy.
My mother and my father taught me to look at the actual problem, not the face of it, not the veneer of it. So for me, I was never - I was impressed that it - racially, I was impressed, right, but now in America it's about economics, and it's been about economics, and honestly, everything's been about economics since I don't want to say the beginning of time, but it's been about economics for a long while.
I only made x amount of albums in 20 years and to still be living comfortably. A lot of people and friends look at me and be like yo Ra how do you do it? You don't go on tour every year and you don't make an album every year, you chill with your family and watch TV. Everyone else is out on tour getting that money. But I managed to do my thing right with the help of my accountant and I'm still comfortable.
I got my deal off MySpace.com. I wrote to J.R. Rotem. He is big producer. He's done a lot of stuff for Rihanna, 50 Cent, Britney Spears and etc. I thought, "Yo, this guy is really talented I want to work with him." Once I sent him message he didn't reply back. I kept on sending the messages. I kept on hitting him back like eight times a day. He eventually replied back like, "Yo, I want to hear more music."
I promised myself as a kid that I would not become that guy. So I have my finger on the pulse of what is going on and I love relevant music today. We are talking about artists like Kendrick Lamar, School Boy Q, Absoul, that whole crew. Of course Evidence and Alchemist, those guys are my brothers and I love those guys, they have been lifelong friends but I have always sort of looked up to them artistically.
You can't write a book if you've never read a book. And if you've read five books and you try to write a book, your book will mainly encompass the themes and the context of the five books you've read. Now, the more books you read, the more you can bring to a book when you decide to write one. So the more rap I learned, the more I was able to bring to rap when I decided to rap. But this was all subconscious.
Ennio Morricone is royalty. He doesn't really do this a lot and Quentin brought him back [in Hateful Eight]. Quentin [Tarantino] basically went back and made his The Good, The Bad and The Ugly-kind of film, the ultimate epic spaghetti western, and then you've got mister spaghetti western himself scoring your movie. It's gonna be hard to not vote for him in a landslide. Probably the easiest win of the night.
Seeing a photograph of myself is often pretty jarring. Why is it that the vision I see of myself in a photo is so different than the one I see in a mirror - not to mention the "self" that I see in my mind's eye? Pondering it can pretty easily cast me into a vortex of self-doubt, wondering how the me that people experience - my voice, my personality, my creative expression - is regarded without my knowledge.
I'm Uncle Snoop. That's the name I've been given in the industry because I'm like an Uncle to all of the rappers whether they are older than me or younger than me and I love giving advice. If I feel like they need some information, I give it to them, I sit them down and talk to them. I try to get all of the rappers on one page of peace, love and just having soul and just being about representing this music.
When I'm on tour, I'll just fly the family out, I'll put 'em on the bus with me. They don't have to be there the whole time, but if I'm gone a certain amount of time, you know I'm definitely gonna fly them out. And then a lotta times when I'm home, I do spot dates and stuff on the weekends, because I always want spend quality time with the family. Family at the end of the day is everything, and I value that.
I get to focus on something I love to do 24-hours a day rather than trying to squeeze it in between midterms, or even during my normal workday. When I was at Google it was like you wake up at 7 and then you get home by 7 and you start your second job of music. So now I get to focus all my efforts on music, travel and play shows and do all of this stuff. That's the difference - That's all my life is, all day.
I try to be true to myself yet still at the same time look at comments and look at what the fans have to say and kind of put it in perspective. I'm never someone whose not open for opinion, I'm always just down to make it work and see how we can do things but at the end of the day I always want to make sure it represents me. It's really about just being humble and not selling yourself on being there already.
I call myself good crazy because I am a crazy normal. But who is normal really? Are you normal? Maybe you are, but I don't think a lot of us are normal. I think a lot of us are scared to say that we are a little crazy. I'm a little crazy that is just the way it is. I look in the mirror now and I like who is looking back at me. I am comfortable in my skin for the first time in my life. I have let a wall down.
People make their life really hard. It was as simple as this: My parents went to church. My grandfather was a bishop. My mom sang in the choir, my dad played the keyboard, and my uncle played the drums. I was into playing the drums, so I played the drums a lot for my uncle, and it got to the point where I was pretty nice at playing the drums. And he let me play every Sunday so, to me, going to church was fun.
Nature only goes so far. Nurture, what you raised on and what you ingest as a youngster, it really affects you when you grow up in really subtle, long drawn-out ways. And to find that, to hear that thing again all those years later and to realize that was the source, it's like, "What else has me twisted?" So now I'm going back to robots and cartoons; I go back to all this to see what got me the way that I am.
In all honesty, based on the direction my life was heading in before I got a real break in the music sh*t, I'm not gonna say I would be one hundred percent in a negative direction, but I know that I would still be in the streets, so if it wasn't for the music bein' my outlet, I'd probably be hustlin', I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to go and get a nine-to-five, I never finished high school or none of that.
I think that the reason my records are able to live forever in the club is because I actually like to be in the club. I don't go to the club to do VIP or get bottles or nothin' - I go to the club, I enjoy the people, I see what the people are vibin' off, and I see what makes me go crazy in the club also, and that has a lot of influence on what I bring to the table when I'm thinking of making a big club record.
I met some brothers out from Canada recently who are real cool people. They make Spanish-language music called Cold Blue and I met then at a Lat-Rap conference and they seem like real good peoples from Central America... and that's what it is. It's just based on mutual respect. So when I meet people like that I'm like, "if y'all going to be real with me, I'm going to be real with y'all" and that's all it takes.
Let's travel at magnificent speeds around the universe What could you say as the Earth gets further and further away Planets are small as balls of clay Astray into the Milky Way, world's outasight Far as the eye can see, not even a satellite Now stop and turn around and look As you stare in the darkness, your knowledge is took! So keep starin' soon you suddenly see a star You better follow it, cause it's the R.
I know for me as an artist, I think I do myself and my listeners a disservice, if I don't listen to some of the best music out there. If I was an architect or a carpenter, I'm going to want to study the best architects and carpenters and I'm going to appreciate their work, because they're going to inspire me to do well. And I just look at them as great architects and I just appreciate the gift that God gave them.
I understand that in the industry, a lot of it isn't real. Which is a difficult thing. Where I come from a lot of people are straightforward and I've had to learn how to not say exactly what I feel. Sometimes it gets frustrating being a person who says what he feels and what his heart is telling him. Every once in a while I fall into letting the industry get the best of me and not just saying exactly what I feel.
I'm kinda racist... I don't really like dark butts too much... It's rare that I do dark butts. Like really rare... It's like, no darker than me. No darker than me. I love the pool test.... If you can be like 'Yo, baby. I met you in the club. Let's go back to my house. Jump in the pool exactly like you are.'-And you don't come looking better wet than you were before you got in the pool then that's not a good look.
The military ain't there for the people's protection, They're just there to protect an investment. That's why people get arrested, electrocuted, molested, Connected streets are infested with those tired of protesting. Traumatized children grown in guerrilla garrisons, 9/11 generations pale in comparison. And you will learn a lesson repeated through history: That no matter what you think, occupation is not victory.
Barack Obama didn't say "I only want to be the President of Black people," he said "I want to be the President of the United States and have something to say about the United States and my perspective and my lens is going to affect my judgment on everything" and that's the way a Christian should be. I'm going to invade culture and my lens and perspective is going to influence culture just as much as anyone else's.
When you're working and you're busy and you're successful, no matter what, something suffers, whether it's your relationship with your mother, your relationship with your whole family. Certain things suffer and take the back burner, not because they're on the back burner in your heart but because the world just moves so quickly. A lot of people, when they're chasing their dreams, they have to leave people they love.
Well, the first thing I do is I try to listen to whatever rapping is already on the track. I listen for cadence and melody to see how the track's already been written, and to make sure that whatever flow or flows I decide to run with, or patterns or melodies that I decide to put into the song, that they're not already in there. Then I try to see if there's a different part of the subject matter that I can talk about.
I'm not playing up to pretend, I don't live above my means. In my song "96 Cris" I say, "...My bills too low for me to fall off." Honestly, if I never did anything again with music, because I put out my own music, I could pay my bills, forever. I can pay my mortgage off my old music. Of course, you probably wouldn't see me in my Lamborghini but, do you really need a Lambo? That's really what you have to ask yourself.
When you grow up in that environment of drugs and guns and people gettin' hurt, it start to reflect your background. And I think, at that time when I was doin' it, that's all I knew. But as I got older in the business, I stopped bein' involved with that, and I started to look at the world. And I said, 'Yo, I wanna start talkin' about everything that goes on in the world. I don't wanna just limit myself to one style'.
You have to work from one point to go to another. So I admire work ethic, I think it should be reinforced through our neighborhoods, that everybody should work hard, practice makes perfect, you have to be diligent with what you want, you have to apply yourself, you have to motivate your self. You have to do for self by yourself, and then you can do things for other people. That's what I had to do, I had to do for self.
I bet you never heard of a playa with no game, Told the truth to get what I want, but shot it with no shame. Take this music dead serious while others entertain. I see they makin' they paper so I guess I can't complain...or can I? I feel they disrespectin' the whole thang. Them hooks like sellin' dope to black folks, And I choke when the food they serve ain't tastin' right, My stomach can't digest it even when I bless it.
My music teacher was like, "Ester, you need to pay attention in class." I'm like, "No miss lady, 'cause I can sing." I didn't want anybody to change the way I sung. I learned by gospel CDs and by watching my momma sing; I didn't need this teacher to tell me. I wish I had, because then I would have learned how to play the damn piano or something. I would have a couple of more things under my belt if I wasn't so hard-headed.
Sand camouflage army men CCF sponsorin, world conquerin, telephone monitorin Louis Vuitton modelin, pornographic actress honorin String theory ponderin, bullimic vomitin Catholic priest fondlin, pre-emptive bombin and Osama and no bombin them They breakin in my car again, deforestation and overloggin and Hennessy and Hypnotic swallowin, hydroponic coughin and All the world's ills, sittin on chrome 24-inch wheels, like that
How do you think policing is in places like China, or North Korea? Whatever we experience, in terms of our policing, I also wanted to make known that the rest of the world suffers ten times more because of that power dynamic; because of the fact that there is no Posse Comitatus in other places which is what prevents in our country, or what is supposed to prevent the military from taking on a policing role of its own people.
I'm extremely proud of what I have achieved. I've travelled around the world twice, went from rolling quarters for cigarettes, balling my eyes out, wondering what I was going to do after losing three million dollars, to being very financially comfortable, to buying a Mercedes G Wagon to being able to get whatever I want and living in a beautiful apartment in West Hollywood, furnished exactly how I want it. Life is incredible.
Somebody can do a ten year stint in jail and when they come home, they can be a rapper. Or, they can go from doing the 9-5 thing and become a rapper because everyone else is doing it. I think that the test of time will tell. If you look around you'll find out who really wants to do it and who is doing it for the come up. I think that's the greatest separation. At some point along the line, it became gangsta to not be talented!
I've basically been able to do everything, I basically run my own career and the decisions I make - whether it's how I'm gonna roll out music, how I'm gonna play on tours, different strategies for releasing and marketing things - and that comes from being college educated and someone who's interested in that side of the business rather than only the music. If anything I think that's where the biggest direct influence comes from.
There is no excuse for a billion dollar industry to have somebody who's pushing papers on an administrative level - which is still very important in terms of getting projects done - it's imbalanced and completely illogical and example of how badly this art form has been rapped... for them niggas to have health care benefits but for themselves to share in no part to that? It's very telling about the climate of the music industry.
When I was producing the first solo album, i just wanted to convey some messages through it. The message was 'no blood will come out even if I am pinned' However, after trying out different kinds of music activities, I started to change and wanted to convey my real emotion that I have in my everyday life. I want to express the feelings that everyone has felt at least once, in music so I think people will feel/understand my songs.
I am involved in every step of the process [musicmaking]. Whether it is the production or the mixing or the visuals and music videos. I'm involved in every step of the way as far as the creative, directing and merchandise . Just making sure everything that falls in line with my brand is portrayed a certain type of way. It all about quality control and attention to detail, and making sure anything you put your name on is on point.