Quotes About Hip-hop

Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change.

People can look to me as a teacher, but I consider myself a student of hip-hop.

I'm forever learning and that's why I'm always able to create new styles and new dimensions of hip-hop.

Soap opera rappers, all these niggas sound like All My Children.

When I leave I always come right back here. The young spitter that everybody in rap fear.

The only good thing about the 1980s was that they invented rap, but rap didn't get good until 1992, so what does that say about the 1980s.

I loved hip-hop. The first stuff I heard was Public Enemy, and I couldn't believe it. It was amazing, and I've always loved hip-hop.

Fundamentally, I'm profoundly influenced by hip-hop, so whatever I do is going to bear that seal.

A lot of MTV's programming is hip-hop based, and the messages are usually all about bling bling. A lot of hip-hop artists sing about stuff that's more important, but they seldom get heard. The ones who get heard are the ones saying, 'Think about yourself. Make your money. It's all you. Everybody have a good time and party.'

There's a lot of hip-hop that's oriented toward a progressive view of America because it's oriented toward a civil rights progress and a critique of the power structure.

I always felt like the Academy was very late in acknowledging things. I've seen them do it with hip hop when it should have been acknowledged. It was already penetrating mass levels of culture and radio, and yet they wouldn't give it a proper category.

Hip-hop is all about impact, baby. You can sell records, you can be two-times platinum, you can be gold... but if you lame, you lame, man. We try to provide the exact opposite of that. It's style, individuality, confidence. We exude that.

When I came up with KRS-One and Rakim, everybody had to step their lyrical game up to build a fan base.

First 2Pac song I heard was 'Brenda Got a Baby.' That was the first one. I didn't even hear it. I saw the video.

The ties between the Obama White House and the hip-hop community are genuine.

The only time you had blacks, whites, and Latinos jamming together was in hip-hop. It's an unsung history.

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.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

First thing you have to understand is that freestyling is much different than making hip-hop music: there's another whole element to being a hip-hop MC.

I love music as a whole. Country music, hip-hop. I just like people being passionate with what they love to do.

I was bringing the whole music, hip-hop, art, break dancing and urban cultural thing to the downtown table.

People think hip-hop is evil, but it's sometimes the people making hip-hop that are evil. The genre isn't wicked, but the people in it are.

I grew up on a wide range of stuff. OutKast, they been around for over 20 years, and some of the L.A. cats like Defari, Dilated Peoples and Likwit Crew. I was always going to these shows and catching the KRS-One tennis ball, as he would throw those out, EPMD. I could go on and on.

The first rappers I ever got into were Wu-Tang, Mobb Deep, and Nas. Those are the guys. Those are the dudes that flipped my wig.