Hip-hop is a vehicle.
Although I grew up as a fan of the culture from the disco D.J. era as a young kid and hearing the beginnings of hip-hop, I’m hearing it all from another borough in Brooklyn.
Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.
I’m not just a hip-hop artist; I feel like I’m a rock star.
I love all types of music. Jazz, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop. I often write scripts to instrumentals like a hip-hop artist. Music inspires me to write. It’s either music playing or completely silent. Sometimes distant sound fuels you. In New York there’s always a buzzing beneath you.
Two records put me over the top with hip-hop. One of them was ‘Planet Rock,’ and the other had no lyrics – it was called ‘Numbers,’ from a group called Kraftwerk. Every kid in the ‘hood in New York and New Jersey was popping, locking, and breaking to that record. It was the hottest track on the street at the time.
I’m someone that examines culture and tries to break down why things are the way that they are whether its hip-hop music, sex, race, or consumerism. I try to examine it and scrutinize it to the point where I can write a song.
Soul music is soul music. It can be wrapped up in a neo soul package; it can be called hip-hop soul. But soul is soul, and it’s been around; it will never go away.
Hip-hop is making a lot of noise. It should get some more spotlight.
Apple has the radio stations, so I go R&B in the morning, and then I’ll go with some hip-hop before the game. But after the game, it’s more meditation music. It’s not artists; it’s more whatever is being played.
As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It’s the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.
It feels like Gangstarr is the purest group in hip-hop. They was shooting videos on the beach in the winter when the water was ice. Razor-blade music.
You’ve got to be true to who you are and what you do. I’m more of a hip-hop feel person. Music is how you feel. The younger the mind, that’s how I wanna be.
I’m a fan of hip-hop. I’m a fan of rap, so anything new that’s happening, I’m hip to it.
Homosexuality in hip-hop is an extension of homosexuality in the black community. The black community is very, very conservative when it comes to homosexuality, and I don’t mean conservative in the good way, like we’re saving money. I mean very intolerant.
I feel like I’m an okay piano player. To the music world, to people that’s in the hip-hop culture, they probably look at me like, ‘Zaytoven the greatest piano player in the world.’ I’m okay.
The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious… There was an integrity that people respected.
You don’t need a band to do hip-hop; you only need a DJ.
Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change.
The biggest misconception in the hip-hop industry is that people are only focused on the money. We should just be happy for everybody that is working in the hip-hop culture.
I’m not hip-hop. I’m Tyler.
I like to introduce people to each other, especially in the hip-hop community.
I like golden-era hip-hop because they were recording on a 2-inch tape. There was dirty, raw sampling. It’s nasty. It has a vibe to it.
My son is a hip-hop producer.
I can’t turn hip-hop off, just like I can’t turn comic books off. It blends into everything for me.
My obsession with hip-hop has given me an addiction to trainers, which are very much a young person’s game, and I am known to rock a full tracksuit, under the pretence that it’s more comfortable to travel in.
That’s what I love from metal, and that’s what I love from hip-hop. That’s what I love from any music that’s hard, that’s got an edge to it-The attitude in it.
There was no match for Barry White. His music is just going to live forever. It’s not limited to disco or soul or hip-hop or anything.
I’m not just a hip-hop artist; I feel like I’m a rock star.
Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.
When I first met Big, we were both at a ‘Bad Boy’ family photo shoot. I was kind of familiar with the name Biggie Smalls, but I really wasn’t that much into hip-hop at the time, so I really didn’t know that was him. He said he didn’t even know I was an artist on ‘Bad Boy.’
I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you’re left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you’re just left with rhythm.
Comedy is the one absolutely self-aware art form. Actually, hip-hop’s another one, I suppose. Because in your songs you’re talking about how good a hip-hop artist you are. It’s like a painter painting a panting of himself painting a painting.
Hip-hop reflects the truth, and the problem is that hip-hop exposes a lot of the negative truth that society tries to conceal. It’s a platform where we could offer information, but it’s also an escape.
I plan on making my mark on the legacy of hip-hop, period, but also in Atlanta production because there’s a lot of history there.
Hip-hop is very diverse, but if you only focus on one aspect of it, then what you get is this image of Black America that is completely contrary to what actually goes on.
I want kids of this generation to see that everything is cool, that there’s some kind of unity in hip-hop. We all found something that’s really important to us, and music is all we’ve really got.
Hip-hop has always been speaking about the way your brain is manipulated by stress and struggle because hip-hop is borne from struggle.
My era was ’90s Carhartt-and-Timberlands hip-hop. That’s my rock n’ roll.
People called rock & roll ‘African music.’ They called it ‘voodoo music.’ They said that it would drive the kids insane. They said that it was just a flash in the pan – the same thing that they always used to say about hip-hop.
I spoke English when I moved to the U.S.A. but I had an accent. To get rid of it, I watched a lot of TV-shows and tried to repeat after the tv-hosts. I liked shows about hip-hop.
The only time I ever really got into rap was back in the early ’90s, and bands like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Gang Starr. Musically, they were really interesting. But when hip-hop acts start sampling Sting or Phil Collins, then I just don’t get it at all.
The ghetto music of my era is hip-hop. And Parliament, and Curtis Mayfield, and Marvin Gaye, that was all the ghetto stuff when I was a baby, and then when I was a teenager it was hip-hop and we were taking all those old ’70s sounds and recreating them and putting them into a hip-hop format.
‘Nothin’ on You’ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.
Hip-hop and R&B is mostly what I listen to. I don’t have a connection with punk rock – I just never had that experience.
I think hip-hop does a very good job of infusing comedy and humor and wit into music, a lot more than other genres.
I am a big music guy. Hip-hop, R&B, old school, jazz.
It’s whatever – people like me and Dre are music people, so we’re beyond just hip-hop. We’re purists. Not everybody who makes beats is a purist.
I grew up around salsa, merengue, bachata, bass music, freestyle, hip-hop, techno, house, rave.
The thing about hip-hop is that it’s from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.
I never lose touch. If you let me tell it, I’ll tell you I never got my just due and my respect for being one of the greats in hip-hop, and because of that, the fire never burned out. There’s more and more of a need for me to succeed or take the legacy a step further, and that’s what it is.
Here’s the thing… when people start making music, they start borrowing styles from other people, because that’s what you do. You start by recreating hip-hop beats you’ve heard from other people, or you start mimicking other people, or you’re just listening to stuff.
I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.
Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.
I’m not saying that hip-hop needs gay rappers or anything, but they need to stop being so close-minded because that will just cause the genre to fail. Look at pop. Pop doesn’t discriminate against people. Look at Lady Gaga, y’know what I mean?
I’ve always felt that because I’m from Cleveland, which isn’t recognised as a place for hip-hop, I needed to step it up if I wanted to make myself known.
When Basquiat was hanging out with Madonna and Fab Five Freddy, and all those worlds were colliding, people have to realize hip-hop and the arts were like this ’cause we both were outcasts: we wasn’t allowed inside the galleries or inside Yankee Stadium. We were writing in the street and making music.
I love the hip-hop scene.
I started dancing when I was 3 in Toledo, Ohio, and started hip-hop dancing at the age of 7.
I am one of the founders of Hip-Hop along with my brothers Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash.
