Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I spent two years making music in San Francisco for my first mixtape. Initially, I was not at all doing this to be a professional rapper, a touring rapper. I didn't think I had that talent level in me.
I remember hearing Will Smith, back when he was just a rapper, saying, 'When all the other rap stars are in bed, I'm practicing my rapping.' I try to be like that. There is always something to improve.
I'm not interested in hearing yet another rapper tell me why he's the best. Why not tell a story set in a specific time and place? Create some characters, add a little bit of action and you're good to go.
I was a producer and rapper before Linkin Park. Once the band took off, it was the center of my focus. A couple of years ago, I started missing doing straight-up hip hop, and that's when Fort Minor began.
So sometimes if I'm working with a rapper, like Ghostface Killah or Nas, producing usually means, in hip-hop, that you make the music. You make the beat, and you give it to them. And they write the rhymes.
As a kid, I liked to write, but I didn't think that was a viable career choice. My dream, actually, was to be a white girl rapper and join Salt-N-Pepa - which obviously was a much more viable career choice.
Ghost tells me every few years, Yo, you showed me this style ... I'm like, man, we the same style. At the end of the day, he's one of my favorite rappers, I'm one of his favorite rappers, and we just do it.
I try to really capitalize off of what other rappers really can't do. There are opportunities that rappers I love simply can't get, because... you know... I don't have the tattoos; I have a different image.
The fact that I got to do the 'Hamilton' BET Cypher is a totally crazy thing because I've watched the BET Cyphers since it started. I've seen every one. I study them. Because I'm a rapper. It's what you do.
I think most people don't know that I really write everything myself. No help. There's nobody in the studio except for me and the engineer. A lot of people don't think I'm a singer. They think I'm a rapper.
A lot of people are comfortable labelling you because it's easy. Like, 'He's a rapper. He can only do this. He can only do these types of shows.' I want to do everything. I want to feel comfortable being me.
It's like they want to shut rappers down. They want to silence us. The Supreme Court says it's OK for a white man to burn a cross in public. But nobody wants a black man to write a record about a cop killer.
Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar sounds decades older than he is, and it's not necessarily the wear and tear that comes from a rough life; instead, his world-weariness seems to result from years of soul-searching.
I believe that everything that you do bad comes back to you. So everything that I do that's bad, I'm going to suffer from it. But in my mind, I believe what I'm doing is right. So I feel like I'm going to heaven
I always knew I could rap, and in a sense I always rapped. And I've always behaved like a rapper. But I started to take it seriously when I recorded with the people of Brick when I started to receive some money.
You have rappers saying "stay off drugs, go to school" - empty verbal behavior. I think all of this became institutionalized in the early '90s. And it's become more and more solidified, more and more entrenched.
I never was the battle rapper. That was never my thing. I always felt like it's enough room for everybody to do their thing. I like bringing new energy, re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, every time I come out.
I really like Damian Lillard, I like Iman Shumpert's raps, Stephen Jackson, Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant. Those are my favorite ones. I like Lonzo Ball, don't know about him as a rapper yet, but I know he's cool.
But I see now that whether I show up for work or not, the evil forces are going to beat me. They're going to come 100 percent, so if I dont be 100 percent pure-hearted, I'm going to lose. And thats why I'm losing.
Right after high school... the first time I ever recorded music was with a rapper, a friend of mine, and I would just be like, 'I'll sing your choruses.' So I would sing his hooks and he would go in there and rap.
Work som', twerk som' basis. She just tryna make it so she's right here gettin naked. I don't judge her-I don't judge her. But I could never love her cause to her I'm just a rapper and soon she'll have met another.
If you feel that you can just come in the studio and freestyle on my song, then I'm ready to rap battle you. That's just how I feel about it because I know I'm way harder than another rapper freestyling on my song.
You know the world's gone mad when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the USA of arrogance and the Germans don't want to go to war !
When people are hitting you off Twitter, a lot of times they don't know who you are. They're just hopping on your character and they gon' be hopping on another rapper next. You gotta weed out the real and the fake.
I'm not just a rapper; I'm an intelligent young man. But being able to give my mother everything she's ever wanted, I could care less about being famous or the money; that's my dream. That's all that matters to me.
When I heard my first rap song and figured out what that was, I kind've stuck to it. I always wanted to be a musician in general, an entertainer. I just started rapping. I never decided, 'Oh, I want to be a rapper.'
People in the East get a very skewed sense of America as this enormously rapaciously sexual place, this place where you have rappers and you have Donald Trump and things like that, which leads to a lot of confusion.
There was a time in the '90s where, as an African-American man, you had to be a misogynistic R&B star or a rapper, and I didn't fit into either one of those. I was advised by my label to remain closeted at that time.
To me, I feel that my game is strong. I feel as thought I'm a shining prince, just like Malcolm, and I feel that all of us are shining princes, and if we live like princes, then whatever we want can be ours. Anything.
People really don't know the extent of what I actually do. I'm not one of those rappers... "Hey! Make a hit. Throw it on an album! Sit at home and make more music." I put 4 or 5 mixtapes out and do shows all year long.
I was a little nervous that people wouldn't take to 'Under Pressure,' because my style and what I embodied had previously been the braggadocious '90s fun rapper type. Before this album, I didn't rap about my life much.
LL Cool J was a rapper-turned-actor, and I also relate to him because he was sort of a ladies' man and had a female fan base, but yet he's a positive dude. You never read about him getting into trouble or going to jail.
If someone had said to me ten years ago "Yo, we have this role of this pimp who wants to be a rapper, he lives in Memphis", I'd be like, "Really?" But then when you read it and you see it, you say "That's a great role."
I don't wanna forget the fact that I wanna be one of the best rappers. I feel like some of the best rappers ever - 2Pac, namely, one of them - could take sub-par beats or average beats and turn them into incredible songs.
On 'Old School,' I was not an actor, I was Snoop Dogg, so I came to the set with a whole different vibe, and a different crew of people. And on 'Starsky and Hutch,' I was more of an actor. I wasn't Snoop Dogg, the rapper.
In hip hop, 'real' has always meant one who represents in actuality what they present in imagery. For instance, once upon a time, if a rapper spoke about being gangsta, they needed to truly be that, or they were 'frontin.'
A lot of times when people listen to music it's because they feel down, and that's when serious hip-hop comes into play. When times is hard, people can hear a rapper that inspires them to do what they [are] supposed to do.
I want people to follow their dreams, yes... but I'm not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers... I want to show them that there's so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.
You already past 21 and you still talking about "I'ma be a rapper." You ain't did one show, niggas ain't seen you on TV. So Kendrick kind of went through the same thing I went through. He just had his mom's house to go to.
Confusion is a gift from God. Those times when you feel most desperate for a solution, sit. Wait. The information will become clear. The confusion is there to guide you. Seek detachment and become the producer of your life.
I'm the most sampled and stolen. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, too... I got a song about that... But I'm never gonna release it. Don't want a war with the rappers. If it wasn't good, they wouldn't steal it.
Lets be clear, Dolly Parton is a rapper. Somewhere before all the country, I don't know what happens up there in the mountains when you're growing up, but she has been spitting rhymes for a very long time - 50 years I'd say.
I guarantee if people keep mm..supportin' me....Just buying my records, goin to my concerts, just supporting me..I'ma keep givin' money....Like Makaveli, every time it go platinum, I'm putting money up for community centers.
When I grab the microphone, I am the greatest rapper, musician, and artist that ever lived, ever, in the entire universe - but when I put that microphone down, I am a man with so much to learn, personally and professionally.
Brother Kendrick Lamar: he's not a rapper, he's a writer, he's an author. And if you read between the lines, we'll learn how to love one another. But you can't do that, I said you can't do that, without loving yourself first.
I think people in the hip hop culture really just care about who has the bars. I'm sure there are people, who see it differently outside of the culture, but most people are concerned with who's a better rapper and that's that.
I think it would be different to work with a guy like Kanye West or Jay-Z, those guys are so phenomenal, but just to work with a rapper, I don't think is really my thing. I really like songs, like true songs. Like indie songs.
I feel like Europe is way more advanced. They're way more open to the definition of jazz. More cool. They're like, 'You want to do that? Awesome. You want to work with a rapper? Awesome.' They're not, 'Aah, it's not real jazz.'
People didn't really take white rappers seriously until Eminem, because he was better than everybody. Like female emcees, you need to be like Lauryn Hill or Nicki Minaj or killing everything before somebody takes you seriously.
As far as hip hop, I ain't even gonna front, it was 'Rapper's Delight.' That was the first thing I heard where I was like, 'Whoa.' You take that beat and do something over it. I started collecting records after that, old records.