I listen to rap a lot. I love Nas, Damien Marley, and Lauryn Hill.
Every once in a while, we have some sort of movement in music that everyone suddenly wants to work in, like grunge or rap or disco or some other musical phase, and then suddenly, that’ll be the thing to do.
Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way.
Rap music is amazing, it’s beautiful. But the problem is the lyrics. The person who writes the lyrics – that’s the problem.
I think when people think of Compton, of course, they always think of gangster rap. But if you ever had an opportunity to go to Compton, you would know that Compton is a beautiful city.
Before I came out, there was no such thing as a black conciousness movement. Kids on the street didn’t know who Malcom X or Martin Luther King was until rap let them know.
Fruitcakes have a bad rap.
Jersey gets a bad rap. Most people make an assessment of this state on the ride from Newark Airport into Manhattan.
When I started forming my own taste, there was a period in high school when I listened to only rap and hip-hop, like A Tribe Called Quest.
A lot of the rap shows I saw as a kid were boring, but if you went to a Rage show or a Justice show, the kids were losing their minds.
I was a metalhead and then I was into the rap and then I was a metalhead again.
I’ve tried to rap, and I cannot do it.
When I was in prison, rap was all I had at that point because I was kicked out of school, all that education just gone and I couldn’t come out of prison to play football – that was all over with.
I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!
I love songwriting, and rap is part of my songwriting, but I’m not a rapper.
Rap is just to me very annoying.
Being young and female in America, you watch a lot of T.V., and you grow up on false images of what love truly is. We think the man with the best rap will protect and save us, about it’s not usually that way. Then you learn love is something deeper and purer in form.
I look at rap as an opportunity to act. My head is full of different characters – in each song I’m auditioning a character.
Don’t get me wrong – we love our hip-hop, but in its own context. Rap has no place in our music. Is what we do rhythmic? Sure. Is it syncopated? Certainly. But our music has nothing to do with hip-hop.
I respect cats that can rap and everything, but the artist that inspires me is Turf Talk.
They believed you can’t mix rock, country, and rap, and that crossover is dead. I always knew it would work. And it will always work as long as you’re really into it and like what you’re doing.
The godfather of rap, that is what I am known as, and the king of party records, the records I do.
Why shouldn’t rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it’s this old idea of containment – that rappers, because they’re black, can’t and shouldn’t aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence.
I’m going to keep making clothes, I’m going to do more movies, and I’m always going to rap.
I don’t just listen to rap.
I listen to all the top 20 songs, and top 20 albums, even the rap albums. But I don’t like negative messages. If somebody is putting a lot of ego out there, I don’t like it. When I make my records I want it to be sincere.
Nobody wants to hear me rap.
Everybody gives Trump an extremely bad rap. He’s a businessman, so he is not trying to rub your back and tell you everything is going to be OK. He is going to set standards and, when everything is in chaos, you need someone who is willing to do what needs to be done.
I understand the bad rap that 3-D is getting because the conversions are crappy and because the films aren’t designed for 3-D. It’s a completely different medium.
I think stuff on the radio is mostly good, but it’s just not what I’m into. I’m not into rap metal.
Chance The Rapper is just unreal: he’s changing rap and really creating this whole amazing new style.
The things I rap about are 100 percent real. But at the same time, I don’t rap about those things to tear my city down. I give you the reality of what it is and what I been through and how it is living in those conditions in Gary, Ind.
I have been skeptical, sometimes, about the importance of rap music, which I think is a capitalistic project to make money.
A lot of rap music can get repetitive.
I really want to learn how to rap. I know it sounds utterly ridiculous!
Rap or hip-hop music emerged in the West because of the atrocities against the Blacks. Their lyrics had a certain style of rebellion and it was quite personal.
I was always into the West Coast rap, the production and the flows were always more appealing to me. I think my rapping days are over though.
When I first started making music, I was all about wordplay and how fast I could rap, but over the years, I’ve really gained an appreciation for melody. What’s cool is that when you’re singing, you have to be concise, and when you’re rapping, you have the opportunity to be really detailed with your lyrics.
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!’
I rap on ‘Front Porch Junkies’ and ‘Whatcha Got in that Cup.’ I try to channel my inner Lil Wayne and Drake. It’s fun to be able to freestyle over a country melody and say country words over a rap song.
You hear a lot of rap songs about spending money. I thought, wouldn’t it be funny to make a song about saving money because it’s ironic, but beyond irony, I genuinely have pride in saving money.
I have a very broad demographic, from the 8-year-old who knows every word to ‘Ice Ice Baby’ and the college kid who grew up on ‘Ninja Rap’ to the soccer mom and grandparent.
Just knowing how to rap doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a good songwriter.
I don’t care if it’s rap, metal, whatever. You still should play Beatles records mixed with Limp Bizkit mixed with Foghat mixed with Creedence Clearwater Revival, stuff like that.
When you’re trying to bring the streets into rap to prove a point, then you already lost. You separate the two, and that ain’t to be played with. You’ve got people that lost their lives and people that are doing real time. If we gon’ make music, let’s just make music.
I did rap when I was a teenager – started rapping when I was nine, and started singing when I was 20. I kinda sing like a rapper would sing.
With rap, it’s a funny thing. You can say things, and people can take ’em the way they wanna take ’em.
Some guy was just like, ‘You rap fast, man. Like a little machine gun,’ and from that moment, I was Lil Uzi.
New York was at the forefront of rap, so because of all the great people who have gone before me, being a rapper from Queens, I have to live up to those standards. I’m basically just a regular guy who says what he feels and likes to joke. I like long walks on the beach… and I love rap.
I’ve always been an outsider everywhere I go – I don’t fit in with the Swedish rap community or the American rap community. But who cares?
In order to get new things to rap about, you’ve gotta live.
My first rap name was Ralo. Because my first name is Carlos. I likened myself to what Busta Rhymes was doing when he first came out. And what Onyx did when they first came out – they reminded me of me.
I don’t like rap music at all. I don’t think it’s music. It’s just a beat and rapping.
I treat clothing or a piece of jewelry like it was a piece of art, even though people who collect clothes get a bad rap because they’re told it’s all vanity.
A lot of the music, and especially rap, I don’t understand.
I think comics has this rap of being misogynistic, and that’s certainly not untrue.
I chose to deal with the underdogs on ‘1 Train.’ I could’ve got the biggest superstars in the rap game, but why do that when you can let the young boys shine?
The rap game without me would be like woofers without bass.
Look at music: I’ve always loved hiphop and rap, and now there’s this whole progressive movement, with De La Soul and Mos Def, Common. It’s some of the best stuff around.
Listening to all these different musical genres from all over the world and listening to my father’s record collection, the Irish folk influences from home. Of course they’re all in there somewhere hiding within the lyrics and melodies. But rap music was the biggest influence on my way of writing and my performing.
I couldn’t do rap. I was trying. I don’t know how. I’m not good enough to know.
Our music attracts the people that we rap about and make music about, and they come out and actually do it.
My come-out record, ’10 Day,’ was the thing people were supposed to hear and figure out ‘he’s good’ or ‘he’s not good.’ ‘Acid Rap’ is the comeback tape, and it asks way bigger and better questions than, ‘Is he good at rapping?’
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.
Consciousness rap – a term that I don’t think exactly exists but gets thrown around a lot – is not exactly popular.
