Rap Quotes - Page 38

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If you're true to the upliftment of people and the unity of people, raising the self-worth of people, then you live within your means. But the problem is that we're looking at the grass on the other side, saying, "That's greener. I want to be in the thug market, but I want to be a conscious rap artist." It doesn't work like that.

I feel like when it comes to rap - like, real rap music - and knowing the pioneers of rap, I feel like there's no competition for me in the NBA. Other guys can rap, but they're not as invested or as deep into actual music as I am and always have been. I think that might be what the difference is. I'm more wanting to be an artist.

I'm not a country music fan, so if you slide me some music and say, 'You gotta check this out; it's country,' I'm going to be a little hesitant to listen, and I think if someone says, 'Hey, you gotta listen to this guy rap; he's Christian,' you're like, 'I don't identify as Christian, so not really sure I want to listen to that.'

If I were to critique myself - step out of KRS objectively and look at him - I would say that KRS has introduced the concept of being hip-hop, not just doing it. The concept of rap as something we do, while hip-hop is something we live. The concept of living a culture. Don't just look at hip-hop as rap music, see it as a culture.

I'm not big on trying to label it [my rap] or trying to prove people otherwise. I'm just making records that I like and that I wanna make. I'm just making records that relate to me and that relate to my life. If you listen to what I'm saying I'm not talking about anything that isn't my life. I take pride in having truthful lyrics.

I describe me sound as international: reggae, pop, rap, R&B all in one. I think I have my own style. I can't really even describe it. People say, "What type of genre is your music?" It's Sean Kingston genre. I have my own genre. No disrespect to no artist or dudes out there. I feel like I am my own person. I am doing my own thing.

I am used to experiencing so much trauma, that when I see it, I have to speak out. I don't think rappers have a responsibility, but if you don't say something or be silent or avoid it, I believe it shows your true real character to the world. It's like, if no one wants to rap about gentrification then I am going to fill that void!

As a late teenager, the punk movement pushed me further. In particular, the Clash, which happened to leak through the time of disco, showed me that there was this cross-cultural sound that could cut across genres and audiences. Like punk was to disco, rap music was a rebellion against R&B, which had adopted disco and made it worse.

To have so many years in the rap industry and so many number one songs, and sold so many millions of records, introduced the world to people like Cool & Dre, DJ Khaled, Pitbull, Rick Ross, Trick Daddy, Remy Ma, Big Pun, Rico Love... I could go on and on. Having been able to influence the rap game for so long is very important to me.

Lil Wayne, I ain't mad at him man, he did his thing, he stepped up his lyrical game, he the most improved rapper out of anybody. I've seen him from childhood status to what he's doing right now. He stepped up his rap game, so he deserves the success he had. And no one else was even doing near what he was doing, so I applaud him too.

Yeah, with 'NASARATI,' that was my first project. I really worked literally three days on it, writing on the beats and putting it together. I'm not saying that I don't love the mixtape, but it was really my first, first move in rap. I tried to make sure everything sound different, so you hear no two songs and think they sound alike.

They thought we were just basically keeping ourselves underground on purpose. And it was just strange for people to approach music that way. And for rap, trying to get recognition, and be seen as a regular form of music like anything else. I mean, the Soul, R&B, Rock 'N Roll, they would dis the hell out of rap when it first came out.

I want to be just a musician and songwriter, and hopefully known as a very good one. I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want.

With rap, you go in the studio, you make music, you put the music out, then all of a sudden, you're a star: you have a big record on the radio, and you're on stage, and you've never done it before. Let's say your first show is 'Summer Jam,' and you're in front of 60,000 people, and you've never played an arena, ever. You're gonna suck.

I have Hispanic friends who are all for [Donald]Trump because they feel they`re getting a bad rap on the illegal people who are here. As opposed to those who came the right way, built up their businesses, have, you know, everything going for them in our country. The country isn`t going with them the way they thought it was going to go.

The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that.

Legions of young hip-hop fans are as against this as hip-hop's most fierce critics. There is a huge underground movement within hip-hop circles that against these representation. You can hear this message on tons of lyrics and rap songs produced by independent emcees. But they are fighting against a well-oiled and well-financed machine.

I like to rap about things that are funny but mostly things that are relatable. I remember there was this one song with Ja Rule, and I forgot, exactly, but it was with Ashanti, and there's a line in it that was like, 'She hit me up on AIM.' But that wasn't the actual line; it was something else, but I was like, 'Oh my God, he uses AIM!'

Rap isn't poetry, not least because it involves music and often other elements that aren't words. But the way poets in English use things like rhyme and meter, and the ways these conventions both do and don't apply to rap we try to lay out the rules for rap, in order to understand the techniques that artists like Jay-Z and Kanye employ.

Yo, it's 1 universal law but 2 sides to every story, 3 strikes and you be in for life, mandatory. 4 MC's murdered in the last 4 years, I ain't tryin to be the 5th one, the Millennium is here. Yo, it's 6 million ways to die, from the 7 deadly thrills, 8-year olds gettin' found with 9 mill's. It's 10 P.M., where your seeds at? What's the deal?

Cloned chickens walking around without heads, The food is contaminated, the water got lead in it. Population control, make the babies sick, All these RFID chips, RU-486... This is a war against consciousness, Controlling your soul, sort of a psychological dictatorship. And we are on the front lines, Guilty as charged if intellect is a crime.

I definitely use "smiling while rapping" as a tool in the booth. I want to have fun while recording. At times it can get tedious and stressful when it's not sounding the way you heard it in your head, but you've got to remember to just smile and appreciate the fact that you're even in the booth and there are people who want to hear your art.

In my mind, New York was the place where they had the underground rap shows and I could get in on some ciphers and just rap. This whole fantasy world I had created in my head about New York just from listening to the music my whole life, like, I'ma go up there and do that. But when I came up here, there was none of that, that scene was dead.

I originally wanted to embrace the imagery and forthrightness of rap music. There are some interesting, dynamic voices in rap. But I find most of it irresponsible in its overt violence and commercialization of anger. As artists, we believe we can will action through language. If that's the case, we have to take responsibility for what we say.

I had written rap songs in the early '90s and even did a couple homemade rap songs with my brother in like '88 or '89, but it was just like... I don't even know how to say it. Just plain rap. I was just rapping about whatever, there was no real style or direction, it was just semi-braggadocious rhymes that probably imitated 100 other rappers.

The hip-hop that I really connected with was Public Enemy, KRS-One, Ice Cube, and N.W.A. That late '80s and early '90s era. The beginning of gangster rap and the beginning of politically conscious rap. I had a very immature, adolescent feeling of, "Wow, I can really connect with these people through the stories they're telling in this music."

There is a gambling element to being somebody who is going to take on the job of constantly trying to represent and prop up people who might be somewhat shady. That notion is probably part of how they got the rap. But, I have to find the balance of being colorful, being at times despicable, and also being somebody who does believe in something.

I love when rappers have a off-beat, very abstract timing, and he certainly did.And any rapper who really approaches rapping with the art form of songwriting melodically - I know a bunch of rappers who actually go in before they write the lyrics and come up with the melody. And you can hear and feel that difference so much when that's the case.

We have to remember that the experience of gangsta rap as such in its foundation is an anti-systemic experience primarily. And it is an anti-systemic experience that is not in some cases politicized, but in general results in a much more transgressive, much more uncomfortable music for the structures of power, than conscious rap or political rap.

In the case of a man and a woman [accused of commiting a crime together], both will often agree to the man taking the rap despite the man being more likely to receive a longer sentence and more likely to be raped in prison. If blacks were agreeing to do that for whites, the black community would be smart enough to call that 'learned subservience.'

It's just that when you heard hip-hop, no matter where you were, it was a culture that kind of made you want to try to be part of it. Whether you thought you were an artist, whether you thought you could be a DJ, whether you thought you could breakdance, or whether you thought you could rap. It was the kind of culture that had a lot of open doors.

I've just really been into melody and lyrics and songwriting. Writing a rap, to me, is easy. I could write a rap like that. But writing songs and melodies and s**t that's hopefully going to stick around for 30, 40 years is f**king hard...If you have good songs and you're talented, people will eventually come to your shows, people will buy your music.

The poor get worked, the rich get richer, The world gets worse, do you get the picture? The poor gets dead, the rich get depressed, The ugly get mad, the pretty get stressed. The ugly get violent, the pretty get gone, The old get stiff, the young get stepped on. Whoever told you that "it was all good" lied, So throw your fists up if you not satisfied.

Now I'm not the type that gets upset, Try to disrespect folks just to earn respect. But learn this fact: whether white or black, I can't be conquered in my style of rap. For jealousy and envy are dumb ones' tools, So Ricky says nothing, he keeps his cool. Revenge is not a mission that the Ruler's on, Just forgiveness required for the wrong that's done.

It's important for me to try to find new ways to express myself, but at the same time, have integrity, and still be me, and not lose myself in the midst of this crazy Rap that I'm in. It's important, it's critical, to just try things out. I think, mainly, it's just me being fearless, and not being afraid to conquer anything that comes in my path, I guess.

Rock 'n' roll is sexuality personified. It is attitude. It is all the things that your parents told you not to do. It's the freedom to express yourself. It's being alive. It expresses the times. It's a magazine, a newspaper that tells the truth. If you listen to rap today, it's all about the truth. And that's what we all want. Just give me a little truth.

I don't get pat down, you know what's on the waist, I don't mean Jazz when I say I "count base." Fly Louis sneakers, Purple Tape coming out the speakers, Bumped into my high school teachers, They said I wouldn't be nothing, sitting on the bleachers. Now I'm sitting in the Phantom, trynna figure out the features. I'm a big fish now, I watch for the leeches.

I think people assume that whatever kind of music you make is the music you listen to. Don't get me wrong, I listen to tons of pop music and all the music that really inspires Best Coast is very straightforward '50s and '60s pop music, but I've been listening to R&B and rap since I was a kid. I grew up in L.A. It's part of the culture. I listen to anything.

Even where the game is today, cats don't really focus on necessarily what it is that you're saying so when people say, "Oh, you can't rap," I play into the joke. That's why I'll challenge anybody; anybody rapping, let's go just because I know what the art form is and even when you see these battle rappers in here, they're so skillful. It's actually a skill.

Take a look at the police and how they treat you, Take a look at these corporations that cheat you. Democrats and Republicans are all see-through. Now we votin for the lesser of two evils... Man, don't let 'em deceive you. This is an autocracy, not a democracy, But to call this a democracy without mock interest In the laws of society? That's called hypocrisy.

Now on the first day of Christmas, my homeboy gave to me A sack of the krazy glue and told me to smoke it up slowly. Now on the second day of Christmas, my homeboy gave to me A fifth of Hendog and told me to take my mind off that weed. Now by the third day of Christmas, my big homeboy gave to me A whole lot of everything, and it wasn't nuthin' but game to me.

Well, when you think music-wise, and if you hang with me or you see me or whatever, the average person will be like 'oh yeah, she probably raps'. This is that stereotype and then I do what I do, so they're more like 'oh, I wasn't expecting this whatsoever'. This especially links with the idea of being a woman in this kind of work and within the footwork genre.

My mom, she got taken away from me when I was 14 years old. She is incarcerated. My sister was incarcerated. I was homeless. When my mom went away when I was 14... I was forced to live with my aunt. My aunt, she doesn't like rap music. She thinks rap music is the devil's music. Basically she said, "Yo, if you are going to do music you can't do it in my house."

See, I don’t expect to win a prize for stoic control and dignity at mourning time. Death deserve tantrums. Beating back shocked indignation, kicks in the groin, stones, classified unacceptable, not to be tolerated, not to be wooed, not to be conspired with. Only then can music, dance, movies, plays, rap be about life. Only then can life be cherished and adored.

With the black male as a teenager, where you're coming from the ghettos and that kind of stuff, you've got to assert yourself, be macho, not let anybody walk over you, so that's where all this unnecessary bullshit comes from - from egos. That's why there are a lot of fights. That's how come the whole thing with rap has been violent. It's because of the male ego.

When I started Fool's Gold and producing consistent records that were like electro beats with rapping on it that was experimental and weird. I made a mixtape called Dirty South Dance where I put rap vocals over dance music. That was literally an experiment. Now all these rappers are rapping on dance music. This is something I've been trying to build for a while.

My sister Suga Tee is doing conscious rap. She speaks to the youth. She has an album coming out soon. She got saved but she is still doing her thing. She still spits good game. She's talented. She sings. I don't know if a lot of people know this but Suga Tee has a beautiful voice. So ya'll look out for her album you dig? And look forward to a future Clique album.

...Cops just surrounding me with pistols everywhere. They put me in the backseat of their car handcuffed, Pushed out them chests like they're big rough and tough. A cop come and said 'You'll never sell your guns now.' I said 'It doesn't matter, you'll sell them anyhow. You take the guns from me, you sell them for a fee; Anyway you put it, they'll get in the city!'

Having had been not so well traveled as a kid, as most teenagers aren't, I always thought, "Okay I'm going to focus my energy on rap and the rap game, because that's how I'm going to be able to pay rent and pay off my school loans." But seeing the reaction with this whole gay rap situation has made me not want to play into it at all anymore and just make whatever.

I rap when I'm rich. I rap when I'm broke. I rap when I'm bullshit in the street. I rap about only having one woman now. If you can look at a continuum of my career, it's been an evolution of a real dude. So when I say I take my wife to the strip club, we're there, at the five-dollar joint. More than anything, I want people to take away that I'm not mainstream act.

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