The art of cartooning is vulgarity. The only reason for cartooning to exist is to be on the edge. If you only take apart what they allow you to take apart, you're Disney. Cartooning is a low-class, for-the-public art, just like graffiti art and rap music. Vulgar but believable, that's the line I kept walking.

It really really sunk into me when I went to Europe and they take rap so much more serious than we do here. That was the first time I ever heard rap considered folk music. And sometimes somebody will make you understand like, "Hey, what you doin' is serious, don't play it lightly 'cause it's changin' my life."

I was literally told for 'The Show Goes On' that I shouldn't rap too deep. I shouldn't be too lyrical. It just needs to be something easy on the eyes. Like a record company telling Picasso that we don't need these abstract interpretations of life, where people have to sit down and look at it and break it down.

The whole point of 'Acid Rap' was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it's all original music and it's got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What's an 'album' these days, anyways?

We often seem to be swimming through such a miasma of sexual violence - in advertising, television programming, heavy metal, rap, films, and worst of all, in the home - that even First Amendment absolutists sometimes daydream about how nice it would be to have government-as-nanny just outlaw all this effluent.

Will Young. He's a great white soul singer. But he was slightly disappointing when I met him - not that friendly. Perhaps he was having a bad day. I love Take That, they're terrific. Gary Barlow is so talented. I've always hated punk rock and I'm not mad about rapping, but then it's not really for my age group.

Stick to the script like paper clips and coffee stains, Never let a seed of doubt deter you from your lofty aims, The will is much stronger than the flesh, And it only gets stronger when you going through duress, Imagination is the factory that makes legends... Close Your Eyes and dream B.I.G. like Faith Evans.

I went to jail at 17. While I was there, I discovered that I could write. Once I started making some songs, other inmates wanted to know a little bit more about what I was doing, and they asked me to rap for them. They really liked it, and I made it a goal to come out and try to make something out of the music.

We've got the slowest 311 song ever, called 'Solar Flare,' which is a scathing political rap that [vocalist] S.A. [Martinez] puts over a really slow, heavy thing, And then there's also a really fast one called 'It's Getting OK Now,' which is [guitarist] Tim Mahoney channeling Dimebag Darrell [Abbott of Pantera].

Before I was not in the television cameras every 5 minutes, I wasn't as visible, but this year I plan on being more visible to ensure that Virgin Rap Division does not lose. Although I am a very low key person, I am competitive, and with every ounce of my spirit, I will ensure that this label is taken seriously.

One of the great things about rap music... it leaves a lot to be desired, as far as I'm concerned, musically, but I do recognize the very important place that it has in music and in creating role models for younger kids to emulate, giving them the dream that they can make it out of whatever situation they're in.

I really want to do the unexpected, and I think that's what I did when I executed 'Long.Live.A$AP.' I wanted people to really see the message and that I'm an artist who not only has the capability of rapping, but of composing great music both for people of my generation and for people with different backgrounds.

For you to be able to rap fast and fit many words into a bar, that's what rap is about, the showmanship. That's the thing we're kind of losing now. I'm not saying that the music now is horrible. I mean, I don't listen to it. The showmanship and creativity in rap is what made it special and what made it different.

I don't accept 'political rapper' because I don't give a damn about either political party. I give a damn about the people. My rap comes from a sociological standpoint rather than picking a particular side or dogma or ideology. I just want people to be free to do what they want, as long as they don't harm others.

I can't say enough good things about my band. I feel very fortunate that I found them when I did, very early in my career. Not only are they just great, nice guys; they're some of the best musicians you're likely to find. They do everything from gangsta rap to polka music and every genre in between. It's amazing.

According to Life & Style Weekly, 50 Cent may be working on Lindsay Lohan's next album. Finally, a match made in rap heaven. He's a convicted drug dealer who's been shot nine times, and she spent 84 minutes in prison. This is a big step for Lindsay. The last time Lindsay got near a black guy she ran over his foot.

As much as people try to pit black entertainers against one another, because of the underlying feeling that there can't be two of us, or, all of us can't do well. That's what hurts rap the most, the fact that none of us are fighting to protect the door of those who run our industry. It's enough money for all of us.

Everyone's supposed to stay in their lines and be neat. 'You're a rapper. You're supposed to rap, carry a boom box, wear chains, and go to the club - that's all you do. What are you doing collecting art? What are you talking about? Wait a minute, you're getting out of the zone.' People hate when people cross lines.

The whole tape [Dedication 5] is amazing. It's my favourite accomplishment [working with Lil Wayne] and I say that with thought. It's the biggest accomplishment I've made today, because Lil Wayne is probably the biggest reason why I'm sitting here right now, rapping and doing what I do. I'm a huge Wayne fan forever.

I like somebody I can consider edgy, because, I also find that when people see me; the first thing they might think about me, musically, is that I rap or make beats, in the sense of trap or hip-hop or whatever, and when they hear what I actually create, they'll often be like, 'Wait a minute, I wasn't expecting this'.

Gangsta Rap is dead. I've moved on. And the raps that I'm rappin to my community shouldn't be filled with rage? They shouldn't be filled with same attrocities that they gave me? The media they don't talk about it, so in my raps I have to talk about it, and it seems foreign because there's no one else talking about it.

Life is good. I've got a apartment that is paid for with rap money. It's good. It's amazing. It's a blessing. I wake up every day and appreciate how much of a blessing this is getting to do this. But it is important to always stay humble, grounded, focused, and maintain that same ambition you had when you had nothing.

I love my city and I feel like the majority of the people that are in the city are people from other cities. So I think that L.A. sometimes might get a bad rap because it's known to be so Hollywood-oriented and then underneath that you have crime. But that's really the case in pretty much any major city that you go to.

I look at old performers like James Brown: back in the day when you actually had to work hard to get poppin'. I look at all those types of performers. Even like Kid n' Play and the Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff and Salt-N-Pepa. That era where they had to perform. You couldn't just rap. It had to be an entire performance.

Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall.

Rap was slowly becoming one of my hustles, but it wasn't my main hustle. But I come from a family of hustlers, so once I figured the hustle out and mastered it, I took it to my brothers like... "we can flip this just like we flip anything else"... and they were with it but also sort of slow to come all the way on board.

In a way, all recorded music is reduced to the same level, no matter what it is. You find it in the store, you put it on and, "Oh, that's not cool. That's gangsta rap. That's white supremacist punk." But in a way, the content is removed from the intention of the people that made it. That's the commercial level of music.

As I do not live in an age when rustling black skirts billow about me, and I do not carry an ebony stick to strike the floor in sharp rebuke, as this is denied me, I rap out a sentence in my note book and feel better. If a grandmother wants to put her foot down, the only safe place to do it these days is in a note book.

The government hates rap. That's why they don't arrest anybody that kills rappers! Only the good ones are dead, man! Only the good ones: Biggie dead, Tupac dead, Vanilla Ice still alive! They don't fill out a police report. They don't even have a chalk line when it's a dead rapper, they just take a piss around the body.

I look into mother's stomach, wonder if you are a boy or a girl Turnin' this woman's womb into a tomb But she and I agree, a seed we don't need You would've been much more than a mouth to feed But someone I would've fed this information I read To someone my life for you I would've had to leave Instead I led you to death.

And when I smiled, 'Bing!' I almost blinded her. She said, 'Great Scot, are you a thief? Seems like you have a mouth full of gold teeth!' Hahahaha, had to find that funny, So I said, 'No child, I work hard for the money. And calling me a thief? Please...don't even try it, Sit down, eat your slice of pizza, and be quiet.'

It's like a paradox. For one side, being popularized rap got better and the other side of it got worse. It's very pop and it's very different now. When you make it as pop and as soft as it is, it lacks its integrity. It lacks its accountability. It lacks a lot of other things that came from that dangerous time in hip hop.

I'm putting everything on the line in being able to express myself in a different way than rappers normally do. They might say, 'It's rap' or 'It's R&B,' but I'm stepping outside the box and making music for me and making music for the fans to understand me. I'm going the extra distance to be able to come across different.

I've reinvented myself every year since 1998, and my style's still changing. It's grittier now. I always gotta try something new. I've grown up. Then I was rapping; now I do music, I write albums. But my distinctive voice and style, people still can't catch it. They're still asking me, "What were you saying on that song?".

Public Enemy started out as a benchmark in rap music in the mid-1980s. We felt there was a need to actually progress the music and say something because we were slightly older than the demographic of rap artists at the time. It was a time of heightened rightwing politics, so the climate dictated the direction of the group.

Pop songs are not as graceful as they used to be. Performers today haven’t gone through the regimen of learning how to write. And of course, everyone wants to own copyrights. Rap culture is interesting and different and has purpose, but it has a non-romantic view of life and of social feelings. There may be a void in that.

For me, being a rap fan and the nostalgia of me being a kid, rappers and guys on the street told me everything to wear. That was it. I didn't necessarily read too many fashion books. Then it got competitive in junior high school. It was moreso about, "You don't got these." Everybody could be fresh, but you don't got these.

You know the evil that men do, hell is where the men go. We snatched him by his hands and feet and threw him out the window: "Up, up, and away cause I don't play, clown, Buck, buck, buck, take that with you on the way down." I'm hoping you got springs and wings on your shoes, But you lose, because I got the Ill Street Blues.

My formative years were in Houston. I was in middle school, and everyone was dropping the last half of their names and adding an 'o' to the end. My little crew that I had, we were an all-female rap group, and everyone had an 'o' at the end of their name. I was Lisso. Then this dude started getting lazy with it, saying Lizzo.

I've always been into music. I used to DJ. I used to mix reggae and that. I used to be into reggae hard. Well first it was rap, then reggae, then rap again, then rap and reggae. But I was always DJing out my window for the whole estate. Everyone used to sit outside and all and listen. And I used to be running rhythms in that.

The Gods have a lesson that tells you to build and destroy and that's the cycle of life. Things have to be destroyed and then it has to be rebuilt. I think rap always go through cycles where it appears that it's destroying itself but it's actually purging itself and after it purges itself it comes into another state of being.

Rap is the only super-current music. If you're into reggae or dancehall, and you don't know Bob Marley, then you don't really know what you're listening to. But if you're listening to rap, and you're 15, you're like, 'Grandmaster Flash? Who's that? Public Enemy? Yeah, my dad told me about them once.' And that's just how it is.

Imagine Eminem writing a play with complex raps and syllables, and melodies flowing in and out. That's what it was like for me listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda, it was incredible. So it just goes to show that if you put your teaching style in a certain form, that will attract the attention of the people you are trying to teach.

I think that a rap aficionado, the hardcore rap fan, will always go away from pop, in the same way a hardcore jazz fan will never think Kenny G is really a jazz artist. You gotta kind of know there's always going to be that purist who's going to be like if it ain't beats and rhymes, if there ain't a DJ, then that ain't Hip Hop.

Moving to Australia was not a career move, but a quality of life issue. It has no guns, no God, and no gangster rap. As an Ethiopian cab driver said to me the other day when I was returning from a gig in Sydney, Australia is a peaceful, democratic place. I like the relatively stress free lifestyle. It's worth the drop in income.

The rapping is cool, but my lines aren't all that fly. People like Biggie Smalls or Jay-Z who say stuff that you have to rewind and listen to twice and be like, "Wow, what made them say that?" or "I would have never thought about saying that" - those are rappers I really look up to. As far as flows, I can give you flows all day.

Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.

I think that hip-hop should be spelled with a capital "H," and as one word. It's the name of the culture, and it's the name of the identity and consciousness. I think hip-hop is not a product, but a culture. I think rap is a product, but when hip-hop becomes a product, that's slavery, because you're talking about people's souls.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As if some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--Only this and nothing more.

The much-maligned idle rich have received a bad rap: They have maintained their wealth while many There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it. Andrew Carnegie of the energetic rich, aggressive real estate operators, corporate acquirers, oil drillers, etc. have their fortunes disappear.

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