There was this hip-hop collective called People Crew. And at the time in Korea, there was no real place to access rap music. So People Crew used to host this summer school program, which taught rapping and dancing. I begged my mom to attend that school to learn how to rap.
Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.
There’s a lot of guys in the league that make music and it’s hardcore gangsta rap. None of us really live that life and you can’t talk about being a thug.
Rap music was a savior to me.
That’s what I used to do; I would just go into the studio and just rap. But it’s all about coming up with dope concepts and dope hooks.
Rap always has that undertone of rebellion and I just wanted to explore it. I felt there was a rebel within me who was against everything – the education system and teachers, and even my parents.
I started producing in California, and they called it mob music. When I moved to Atlanta, the sound was different. People in Atlanta didn’t like to rap over West Coast beats. So I had to make adjustments to what was going on in the South.
I think a lot of American fans or people that read about us – they think that we’re trying to be a part of the American culture, like all these Swedish kids that love America. We rap in English, so I guess there’s something, but we’re very Swedish, actually.
I think if you pick up a microphone and you rap, you’re a rapper.
I mean I’ll be retired from rap, so what I’ll be doin’ in rap will be for fun.
I think most music provides the same messages – whether it be ‘I’m unhappy’ or ‘I love a girl.’ I just liked the package of rap music.
With rapping, that’s just another form of expressing your music. Whether you’re going to rap, you’re going to sing, it’s whatever you want.
The fact that rap has a strict meter and stays to a click means that you have to make your thoughts concise.
When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.
My brother is 10 years older than me, so whatever he listened to is what I listened to, and it was all rap.
Hip-hop was my first audience – I would rap in the mirror, walk down the street and listen to my Walkman.
If I could rap, that would be a sensation, but I can’t, you see, I’m just a Caucasian.
When you do rap albums, you got to train yourself. You got to constantly be in character.
To me, the whole thing with the roots of rap music was when the DJ had to supply all the music for the group with two turntables. And the whole criteria of what that DJ would use had nothing to do with what type of band made a record.
My focus is anything that allows me to express myself. Rap, dance, photography. Those are my forms of expression.
Most people when they rap usually have their homies in the studio who rap with ’em, but they homies don’t usually be producers.
I don’t like rap that doesn’t have a story behind it.
Part of my affinity with urban music comes from being on ‘Kids Incorporated,’ ‘cos we used to sit around and listen to Chaka Khan and Prince, and I got influenced by all that. Then gangsta rap got started, and I was infatuated with that – maybe that’s why I’m fascinated by guns.
Rap and spoken word have reawakened the country to poetry in itself. Texting and Twitter encourage creative uses of casual language, in ways I have celebrated widely. But we’ve fallen behind on savoring the formal layer of our language.
We have groups that do that, but I can’t rap with the mentality of an 18 year old when I’m in my 30’s.
If you hear people talking about the Golden Era of rap, they’re usually talking about the early Wu Tang Clan era and then Nas and Biggie and so on. But for me, it goes back to the ’80s – 1986 to 1989.
Government workers often get a bad rap, but it’s rare for them to receive much appreciation when government works.
I just cut songs I love and that represent what I want to say. And if it crosses over, that’s very flattering. It’s cool to know that with people listening to rock and rap, I’m sitting on their iPods along with that stuff.
This rap game is just WWF; everybody wants points off somebody else.
I love pop and rap. Bringing those two worlds together is always fun.
I’ll always love rap, no matter what’s going on.
I just consider myself an artist. I don’t really rap. I don’t really sing. I just do what I feel is good, and people like it.
Elvis Presley was rock ‘n’ roll, I thought that was pretty mediocre. But since that time, the succeeding steps in music has been down, just more degradation. Then we got into punk rock, and now we are into rap music, which is a total oxymoron.
You’re not going to hear me do a rap song, you’re not going to hear me do a jazz song. We have to be true to our roots, do what we do, and try to do it a little better each time.
I love folk. I love rap.
Speculators get a bad rap. In the popular imagination they’re greedy, heedless, and amoral, adept at price manipulations and dirty tricks. In reality, they often play a key role in making markets run smoothly.
When the Chicago rap scene came about, I listened to all of the upcoming artists like Lil Durk, Chief Keef and G Herbo.
Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.
If you make modern rap music, how do you write without ripping off anyone else? It’s just about having a distinct voice in your songs.
People don’t want rap to be anything other than it is. But genres expand. My contributions, no matter how they sound, will always be rap, because they’ll always be black.
Now I listen to all kinds of music except rap, which all sounds the same to me.
I am Michael Render – that’s what my mom named me. ‘Killer Mike’ is what my dumb friends called me in a rap battle once, and it stuck.
Rap is a gimmick, but I’m for the hip-hop, the culture.
I knew I could rap a little bit, which is not the most unique way for being funny. The more I did it, the better I got at rapping, and then I fell in love with the craft of it, and the possibility that I was a good rapper was very intriguing.
I love that twinkly, girl rap. I’ve always loved that.
The first rap that I wrote was about my Maths teacher, and as expected, he didn’t like it, but the students loved it!
So, rap has that quality, for youth anyway; it’s a kind of blues element. It’s physical, almost gymnastic. It speaks to you organically. Rap grows out of what young people really are today, not only black youth, but white – everybody.
If I apply myself to rap, I’m gonna be the best rapper alive. If I apply myself to comedy, I’m going to be the funniest guy alive.
We feel we’re setting a trend. Other girl groups watch our style and see how we rap. And there are some male rappers I feel we’ve overthrown.
It’s funny: I don’t listen to too much rap. I don’t listen to too much older hip-hop. If I do, it’s Ja Rule.
My writing process is consecutive, like, ‘mad scientist’ crazy. It’s not totally writing something that rhymes or even writing a rap necessarily. Sometimes it’s just writing down stuff that I’m going through.
I think British journalists do well in America because the newspaper culture there is so strong – telling stories and presenting them readably is in their DNA. British newspapers get a terrible rap, but they are brilliant in their presentation, most of them, so full of vitality and literary wit.
After I got dropped by Interscope, I knew in my heart that I had to fight back some way or not rap at all. I just took it upon myself to get myself where I needed to be.
When I see things that are inspiring, I must write a song about it. Some people make a t-shirt or slap something on a wall with paint, but I must make music and freestyle rap.
I was writing rap at 12 years old and began writing songs as a 20-year-old. I think I wrote my first song in the winter of 2008-2009, when I was in Buenos Aires. I was writing about growing up and my boys back home.
Battle rap is about how much you can say and putting so many different words and expressions together to get your point across, and songwriting is like, how can I get that same point across but by saying less.
Although rap is about boasting, it’s also about honesty and expressing your emotions.
Some of the hip-hop stuff people get into is exciting, because there’s a passion and there’s something to explain to a more mainstream audience, so you get these passionate writers who want to express their love for rap and hip-hop, which is cool.
When it comes to love, maturity often gets a bad rap – second love is boring; it’s practical. It’s what our parents feel for each other.
I’ve got a bad rap for not being more charismatic between songs.
When I first got into the rap game, I had an early dream of unifying rappers.
I’m putting everything on the line in being able to express myself in a different way than rappers normally do. They might say, ‘It’s rap’ or ‘It’s R&B,’ but I’m stepping outside the box and making music for me and making music for the fans to understand me. I’m going the extra distance to be able to come across different.
My take on rap is driven by straightforward American southern rock and blues.
People’s outlook on Kansas City is always like, ‘They let you rap in K.C.?’ Or ‘How’s Dorothy and Toto?’ They put Kansas and Kansas City together, when it’s really separate.
