I love having my son in my life. That’s why it’s more fathers in the hip-hop community, because they probably went through a fatherless childhood like I did.
We was just talking truth. We wasn’t trying to be political. We was just trying to be hip-hop artists.
In the future, hip-hop is going to be called American folklore.
If you like rock and roll, if you like rhythm and blues, if you like jazz, if you like hip-hop, you might be black-ish.
Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you’re always going to find a hip-hop tape; that’s all I buy, that’s all I live, that’s all I listen to, that’s all I love.
I love ‘Yoga With Adriene’ videos on YouTube, cardio hip-hop, and kickboxing.
Notorious B.I.G. was one of my favorites. I started getting into hip-hop around the Bad Boy era.
Hip-hop is as much an attitude and perspective as it is a music form.
Hip-hop has always been about keeping it authentic and being authentically you. That is what I try to do in my music and when I speak about the Bible.
I’m trying to make music that I like, and I love hip-hop. At the same time, I love guitar. I love rock and everything.
I now possess the tools as a producer and a songwriter to really just go out and make smashes all day long. I could make an album full of smash records that got pop appeal. But my heart is in hip-hop. My heart is in telling stories. And it’s like therapy for me.
I see dancehall reggae and hip-hop as fused together, When I was a kid, they were the two kinds of music that spoke to me and said ‘Move!’
We used to talk about wanting to get some money, but that’s when hip-hop was based on your dreams and your fantasy. The whole thing now is the dreams and fantasies were achieved, and you don’t want to make it the focal point. You can’t keep beating that dead horse.
In the little rural town I grew up in, I missed out on the pop music of the time, the ’80s, and now enjoy in retrospect. It’s as an adult that I’ve opened it up to dance, hip-hop, R&B, and even big pop songs.
Come on, I’m from Iceland; I don’t do hip-hop.
My brother’s been producing rap music and hip-hop for maybe 10 years.
My greatest contribution to hip-hop was allowing the United States of America to know and understand exactly how far they reach, and how influential they are to children in completely different countries because I am the import.
Hip-hop is the streets. Hip-hop is a couple of elements that it comes from back in the days… that feel of music with urgency that speaks to you. It speaks to your livelihood and it’s not compromised. It’s blunt. It’s raw, straight off the street – from the beat to the voice to the words.
When you’re part of hip-hop culture but you’re a Christian, people want you to be either-or. Or they’ll create a category for you, like, ‘Oh, gospel rap!’
But I think the image that’s thrown out on television is a bad image. Because you see players who want to imitate hip-hop stars. And the NBA is taking advantage of the situation.
I always felt really alone because no one wanted to talk about the things that I enjoyed, and that was really rap music and hip-hop as a culture. You know, having the shoes, using the words, buying the magazines, seeing the videos. And I had nobody to share it with, so I feel like I lived a lot online.
You can never be too old for hip-hop.
The Temple of Hip-Hop makes sure that we don’t just approach hip-hop just through music or through rap. We approach the totality of hip-hop.
No, I’ll stay Ice-T. This is what got me here, I’m always going to stay true to that. If it weren’t for hip-hop I wouldn’t be doing all these other things.
Quentin Tarantino is a hip-hop artist. I told him, ‘You’re hip-hop!’ You keep seeing surprises, and a clip here and there, because Quentin is hip-hop. A hip-hop artist will drop a single, leak something over here, and drop something over there ’cause he knows it’s hot. He’s on the spot with the way he does things.
To its credit, hip-hop is my favorite genre, to this day, and it’s hard not to be influenced by the culture and by the movement of it and by the soul of it.
I’m obsessed with Norah Jones and Amy Winehouse, Etta James. I’m really into blues and R&B type of stuff, ’90s hip-hop; that’s my jam.
I don’t even know if hip-hop is music anymore. It’s definitely rhythm. It’s definitely tempo. It’s definitely beats per minute. But it’s product. And television is product placement for the most part. It’s not passion.
I think Ye is important to hip-hop.
Most people have a blank slate and can start from nothing. But for me, I had to break a bad habit that I’ve been doing all of my life, which is freestyle hip-hop.
I’m 60, and I did 60-year-old women songs. I’m not trying to be the Hip-Hop Queen, although I am the original Hip Hop Queen.
Hip-hop for me has always been hardcore and edgy.
I am hip-hop!
The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.
I like hip-hop music.
In hip-hop, as in neoliberalism, economics bullied politics out of the picture.
What’s on my playlist when I’m fighting is not so much hip-hop. Sometimes, it’s something more inspirational. I get a chance to think about what I’m fighting for, like, my family. It takes me to that state because a lot of times, it’s a spiritual warfare for me.
I grew up around salsa, merengue, bachata, bass music, freestyle, hip-hop, techno, house, rave.
When I do music, I don’t feel like it’s competition. Then again, it kinda is, but I don’t like thinking like that. And I don’t understand why they do that to women and, especially, women in hip-hop.
My musical knowledge goes beyond hip-hop.
I think hip-hop has always been political because this is a community that doesn’t have any other choice.
There are a lot of country artists now that are heavily influenced by hip-hop. That’s not me. I was very heavily influenced by rock & roll.
Hip-hop is a collage. It samples from all different styles of music.
In hip-hop, I wasn’t very focused on delivering a message. It was just a string of lines that didn’t connect. What I wanted to do is write stories… and affect someone’s emotions with that song. I think as a soul singer, I’m able to accomplish that.
Hip-hop saved me. It gave me permission to use language in a certain way. It validated my community and my friends. It gave our slang a certain elegance.
Rap is rhythm and poetry. Hip-hop is storytelling and poetry as well.
Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn’t even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that’s been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.
I was always attracted to music that moved people. Whether it be gospel, R&B, folk, hip-hop, pop, alternative rock – whatever moved people, whatever made a crowd just get lost in the moment.
If you’re going to write about rap music and hip-hop, and you don’t love it, then we don’t need your opinion, and we revoke your opinion.
I feel like hip-hop is the new pop because it has a lot of influence because of our culture.
The head-banging music gives me a headache. Katy Perry is fun, Rihanna, old-school ’90s hip-hop. Salt-N-Pepa. I like listening to that. Get the nerves out before the games.
As a kid, I was listening to Aretha Franklin, Etta James and hip-hop as well as music my parents were listening to, like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.
I guess hip-hop has been closer to the pulse of the streets than any music we’ve had in a long time. It’s sociology as well as music, which is in keeping with the tradition of black music in America.
Every hip-hop artist I have worked with has a respect for higher power, whether that’s church, Allah, or any sort of higher being – they all have a humbleness.
I don’t dislike rappers or hip-hop or people who like it. I went to the Def Jam tour in Manchester in the ’80s when rap was inspirational. Public Enemy were awesome. But it’s all about status and bling now, and it doesn’t say anything to me.
I moved to New York – I attended NYU, did a BFA in Acting at NYU. I was really into hip-hop, so I started battling, like ‘8 Mile.’ I used to rap battle.
Hip-hop educated me about other forms of music, because it sampled from all different styles.
Hip-hop is so saturated with the same old same old that people always expect the guy to actually be the guy. They want you to be real and straight from the streets and all that.
To be a white kid into hip-hop meant you’d sought it out and you practiced the art. Which meant dedication and diligence, as well as removing yourself at least occasionally from your own comfort zone and circumstances, and from people who looked like you.
I like that I’m not typical. I like that I’m called ‘no-genre hip-hop.’
I’ve known about hip-hop for a long time. The first time it intrigued me was when I saw this music video by Tyga on television. I was intrigued by the whole aesthetic. It was very unique.
I wanted to appeal to people who’ve never really listened to hip-hop or really given it a chance before. I’ve also tried to incorporate all my favorite lifestyle things in the music. Of course, ‘Fashion Killa’ is one of peoples’ favorites because it just expresses how much I like fashion.
Rock is periodically pronounced dead by clear rock critics – killed by world music, or by hip-hop, or electronica, or the Backstreet Boys. But if you wait a year, it comes back to life.
