Quotes About Rap

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.

I ran into Snoop one night. I was in the studio later, and I got this beat and thought he would sound great on it. I called him and he came right through that night.

A lot of rappers think they better than me because they saw me broke, going in and out of studios, and couldn't pay for studio time.

I was listening to Chuck D, KRS, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, all the greats, studying them.

Every time I bought someone's album, it was about the connection. I was loving everything, from their raps to their style. I wanted to meet them.

I'm just a Harlem dude that can rap, and people dig my style and persona.

By now, you should know what you're getting with Pusha T. I've been in this game since 2002, and my name says it all. You know I'm only moved by a certain style of rap. Not that many other styles move me. You have to really be a rapper's rapper for me to like it.

I think a lot of guys are influenced by 'Pinata.' I fathered a lot of styles off that album.

I'm a big fan of D Double E who always used MCing styles that other people weren't.

People have compared me to Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Eminem, and J. Cole. They bring substance and largely are all good storytellers, and those are two of my biggest strengths. It's dope to be compared to people who have longevity in the game because that's the most important thing for me: I want my name to live forever.

What I have that's special in my music is substance. It's music that people can really relate to. I know I'm gonna rap something that somebody has already been through in their life, something that they will understand.

The best way to compliment an emcee is to say his lyrics. That's how you say, "Hello."

Everybody raps. We rap to make money. We do business. Ain't no other record company out there that sold as many records as we did.

There has been an effect of business rap on the output of today's rap music. But I don't think that's the modern day rapper's fault.

But there have always been these people for whom rap language is more scandalous than the urban deprivation rap describes.

Finally, in the crowded third corner, stand the many people who feel rap is not music at all but rather a form of social problem. They have only one question to ask a rapper, and it concerns his choice of vocabulary. (Years pass. The question never changes.)

But asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.

the KLF were a bunch of conceptual pop tricksters who won the hearts of their home country with stunts like recording country singer Tammy Wynette in a rap context. Performing at the prestigious BRIT awards, Extreme Noise Terror blasted the KLF hit "3 a.m. Eternal" into oblivion while the KLF sprayed the audience with machine guns preloaded with blanks. When the KLF were awarded "Best British Group" honors later that night,

We did the Dope Jam tour in the spring and summer of 1988—besides me, it was Biz Markie, Boogie Down Productions, Doug E. Fresh, Kool Moe Dee, and Eric

N.W.A dropped Straight Outta Compton, and when Ice Cube said the line "from the gang called Niggas Wit Attitudes," boom—suddenly the media had a new phrase to latch on to: 1988 was the year of gangsta rap. N.W.A took it to stratospheric heights, and I was dubbed the godfather of the movement.

I tried to make a 'When Doves Cry' in a rap version. I used a lot of instruments and I broke it down like I thought Prince would do, and that's the song I sent to Big Boi.

A rap is a tweaked version of comedy, because comedy came first. People weren't spitting before they were doing comedy. Comedy has been relevant for years. It's the same art form, pretty much. Discovering that and applying it, I think that has made my stand-up better.

With 'LilDurk2x,' it's a good vibe to it, good energy.

I definitely think that my vibe has rubbed off on Drake a bit.