Racism is taught in the home. We agree on that? Well, it’s very hard to teach racism to a teenager who’s listening to rap music and who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg. It’s hard to say, ‘That guy is less than you.’ The kid is like, ‘I like that guy, he’s cool. How is he less than me?
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.
Rap is supposed to be about keeping it real and not relinquishing your roots in the community. Without that, it’s just posturing. Somebody who claims to speak for the ‘hood don’t need no private jet.
American artists, Americans in general, don’t take the U.K. rap scene too seriously, yeah, but thing is though, they wasn’t taking Canadian artists that seriously either. And now we have Bieber, The Weeknd, Tory Lanez, Drake – massive, massive Canadian artists.
Who gave it that title, gangsta rap? It’s reality rap. It’s about what’s really going on.
The fashion and the rap go hand in hand with New York City.
You can’t compete with hip-hop. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be as big as a rap star. I do – I’m always competitive. But there’s this weird perception of me as someone who’s sitting around plotting like a devil. It’s not like that.
Highbridge – everybody rap in Highbridge; everyone grew up rappin’ or playing basketball.
I still to this day get the most inspiration from rap lyrics.
Rap records don’t make you feel good no more. Six months after release, it can’t come back as a classic.
I’ve always listened to a lot of rap. It’s all, ‘Look at this car that cost me so much money, look at this Champagne.’ It’s super fun.
My girlfriend is rap. Music and albums and records and my kids.
I am looking to get into the grime rap U.K. scene.
As far as rap, I was more of a Mobb Deep guy rather than a Tribe guy.
While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of ‘difficult’ poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there’s room for ‘difficult’ poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won’t be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.
I will rap circles around anybody.
When break dancing was out, I break danced. When rapping was the thing, I freestyled rap on the street and battled and all that kind of stuff.
When I found Freestyle Fellowship, I started getting into the construction of rap. You get better at it the more you do it; you figure out the science and the math behind it.
There’s no reason for somebody who’s good at writing rap to be good at freestyling. They’re different parts of your brain. You can develop both skills. I’m a much better writer.
What I’m trying to do is break the genre from what is rap and what is music.
People used to laugh at me like, ‘Hahaha, you can rap? You? We don’t believe it!’
My favorite one, it depends. As far as rap wise, I like ‘Ask ‘Bout Me.’ I like that one. It’s like a statement: this is who I am. This is why I’m here. If you don’t know, you’re about to find out.
While the West tries to turn its civilization into cultural variety hour, Islam tries to turn Muslim lands into a cultural monolith. The same West that justifies the rap culture thinks that every Muslim terrorist bombing is an expression of economic angst or social alienation.
I think rap is creating a reverse racism.
I’m not a good dancer but Rap Monster is really terrible at it. The two of us are ultimate dance rivals.
Every time I rap about being a big girl in a small world, it’s doing a couple things: it’s empowering my self-awareness, my body image, and it’s also making the statement that we are all bigger than this; we’re a part of something bigger than this, and we should live in each moment knowing that.
I don’t want to rap about my car. How generic is that? Be creative.
I want to make people have fun again and show people that people can just rap and snap.
In high school I had a boyfriend who was super into rap, so I was into Too $hort and Wu-Tang for a little while. And my best friend’s older brother would sometimes drive us home in this pimped-out truck, and he’d play all his dirty rap music. We thought we were really cool.
I cut a rap song once. It was a few years ago for my old show ‘Buck Commander,’ and it was a song called ‘You’re Short.’ It was about my camera guy. We shot the video in Las Vegas, ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ style!
I often find myself writing little ditties I can imagine becoming rap songs. Not the actual rapping part, just the chorus.
‘Obsession’ has a bad rap.
Personally more so than shock, I think, rap music has to be born of rebellion.
I can’t really rap the way rappers rap; I drive a 2002 Toyota Avalon.
I grew up listening to Jay-Z, and I think the first time I really became obsessed with learning and thinking about lyrics was when I started listening to rap; I was 11, 12, and started becoming aware of music beyond the familiar.
I’m changing every day as far as this rap thing. I’m learning new things. I’m getting bigger by the day.
I have considered rap music stars, and there is one in my new book, Lovers and Players, and there is also a hip-hop music mogul who I think you will like a lot.
I’m letting inspiration move me, in whatever direction it may, without concern if this sounds too rap or too indie, or there’s too many words in it.
I don’t know if I’ll ever make rap music, but I just like people who are like, ‘I am going to just find the medium that’s best for this idea and master it and do that.’
The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you’re an artist who’s making something which isn’t how its mainstream appearance should be, there’s always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be ‘real’ as a rapper.
I feel like I influence more than just rap.
Bohm’s ‘ontological interpretation’ was so called because of the bad rap the word ‘ontology’ has had in our correlationist age. As a bit of a put-down.
Jay Z and Nas is probably my favorite rap beef because Nas was kinda quiet for a while.
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 like African music but also R&B, rap, alternative rock, and classic.
I like to make music, I like rap music. Even if I’m white, I support that music. If I want to support it or any other white kid wants to support it more power to them.
Meetings get a bad rap, and deservedly so – most are disorganized and distracted. But they can be a critical tool for getting your team on the same page.
I don’t make Christian rap, but I am a Christian rapper.
I was, like, 12 or 13; the first hip hop song I tried to rapping to was Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop,’ and my English was so bad, but learning to rap to different songs really helped me with my pronunciation, and looking at the lyrics on Rap Genius and stuff like that.
I’m a mother myself, and sometimes mothers get a bad rap just because they’ve tried to do their job. Some people have more of a knack for it than others do, but almost all of it falls to, ‘My mother’s suffocating me.’ Whatever.
I cleaned up my act, and I made this rap thing work for me. I thought people would respect me for that. But instead, it’s, ‘Oh, he’s sold all these records, and now he thinks he’s all that.’
Rap in general has never been my steez, but I like it.
I know some very political people who rap, and they say very political things and they’ll never get a deal.
I’m in R&B/Soul, and I feel like all my music is R&B driven. Even some of the songs that are more rap have an R&B feel, so I’m with that.
I can’t freestyle or else I’ll just start saying anything, so I’ll write the song first and then record. I’ll rap to the producer and he’ll make the beat off my rap.
In the early ’80s, it was hard to find celebrities you can identify with if you lived in the hood. There weren’t any rap videos at the time.
One of the things that I’m dying to do is to sing the hook on a big rap song.
What music I listen to day to day changes very, very much. I can go from bluegrass to heavy metal, to blues, to classical and big band and then go to pop and rap.
I’m a tremendous believer and supporter in hip-hop and rap.
Our talent and skill as rappers is clearly the first thing you notice. I don’t know what we were thinking. We just really love rap and wanted to be rappers. Is that weird?
Listen, if you a comedian, and you try to jump in the rap lane, it’s not gonna work out the way you think it’s gonna work out. Just cause you got 4 million followers, 5 million followers, them people follow you ’cause you a comedian. So, once you try to rap they are not going to take you serious.
My earliest memories of defying my parents were through music. I remember rap being banned in my house, and then getting a Cam’ron album.
I’m writing songs to perform, to entertain. And when I’m really trying to get inspired, I go backwards, and I just rap.
That’s something I can never lose: my love for the art of rap. As I grew older and became more interested in song writing, it just pushed my possibilities further. I always have to have a foot firmly on the floor as a rapper, because that’s how I started.
