Quotes from Paul Wall

I'd be on the airplane and have to ask for seatbelt extensions.

When I was growing up, white people made fun of me. So it was always strange to me as I would gain prominence in hip hop, white people kind of accepted me more and they would talk to me more. It's so weird to me, growing up, thinking about that in my life. It really is a complete change.

Some people will come up to me and say, somebody stole this from you flow-wise. I'll say I gave it. Who am I to be a gatekeeper? Anything I did, I'm giving it to the world.

I had always told my people, 'If you set me up to get 'Punk'd,' I ain't never speaking to you again, because you aren't going to have me looking like no fool on TV.'

To be able to do a song with Kanye West and then a video with Hype Williams who directed the video, that's a highlight of any artist's' career.

I'd like to team up with somebody like Willie Nelson or Ray Benson.

There's a lot of culture vultures out there taking our culture down here in Texas.

I take a lot of pride in being from Texas. I love all parts of Texas - even the things I hate about Texas I love.

Honestly, I personally would prefer to have my name not mentioned alongside codifiers, like 'white rapper' or things like that, because the codifiers I like are Texas rappers. If you were to compare me to Lil' Keke or the people that really inspired me, like UGK... In my mind, that's who I think I should be compared to.

A lot of the jewelers - not that they're not good people - but they're hustlers.

I'm not really interested in rappers who talk about rap. I don't talk about it, and I don't like listening to other people talk about it. So I stick to the things that I know. You know, things like cars, ultimate fighting. I have a lot of songs about cars, because they're a big part of my lifestyle.

It never crossed my mind that I was the white guy rapping. I was best friends with Chamillionaire and whatever he did, I did. If he rapped, I rapped. It was something we did for fun at the track meets or basketball games. Or get in these freestyle cyphers with other schools. Me and Cham rapping together.

If you choose the right people for the group, it goes a little bit differently. At the same time, you can't always predict what's going to happen. Success might change people.

Swishahouse, it started off as just a crew making mixtapes and that's when I got down with it back in like 1998. It wasn't a record label at first. It was all just for promotion, for fun, and we just had a crew representin' for our hood.

I'm gonna rap the same whether I'm white, black, or Hispanic, I'm still gonna be me.

I never won any award, ever, except for a Houston Press award, but other than that, I never won an award.

Houston isn't about a you or an I or a me, it's about a 'we.'

If I meet somebody and I'm like, 'Hey, how you doing?' And you give somebody a hug, or a half-hug, and they stank and it rubs off on me, that is contagious 'cause I'll be smelling like roses and then it's like, 'Wait a minute.' I'll change shirts and I'm still funky.

I love music so much, and as long as I got all this enthusiasm and ambition, and passion for this music; as long as I'm having' fun - I'm gonna keep doin' it.

When you're trying to do something because you're trying to stay relevant or it's the thing to do, then it's a chore. But when you just have fun with it, then it's fun.

I've always been adventurous - my wife calls me 'the Hip Hop Crocodile Hunter' - if you can survive in the hood, you can survive anywhere.

You know, coming from a broken dysfunctional family, you know, it's something that I always aspired to be - a good husband and a good father.

Whenever you ain't afraid to grind and ain't afraid to put in that work, that's a hustle, man.

I linked up with Swishahouse when I was 17 or 18, and was a child through most of my first few records. The music wasn't childish or corny but you could see it was from a place of a child - somebody that was a little more ignorant or ratchet. Now that I have kids, there's a bigger sense of responsibility.