People always think I just focus on rap, but I listen to every type of music. If I like a song it don’t matter what genre of music it is. I might listen to Duran Duran, I might listen to Sublime, maybe Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Hip-hop is when you have crowd participation; when you chant at the audience and they chant back at you; when you wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care; or some breakdancing. Everything today is just low-beat, real bass-y, bass-y, good rap records.
Gangsta rap was the most important movement since the beginning of rock n’ roll.
When you work with Drake, you don’t really work with Drake. You send him the song, he rap on it, then y’all done worked together. So it ain’t like me and him sitting in the studio.
I ain’t never did no sports. I just always wanted to rap.
I don’t just rap – I sing and I dance as well.
I rap about Memphis and what a dangerous spot that is.
If you do enough rap shows, you get a pretty good sense of an audience. You start to develop this sense of what a feeling of a room or a group is.
To me, the 90’s signaled the end of glam rock, the beginning of gangsta rap, and hopefully the beginning and end of boy bands.
I feel like I was the only person who was capable of making this type of music in this type of way. I don’t rap like nobody, I don’t try to sound like nobody.
People in my family and camp who grew up listening to rap music love ‘We Are Young.’ I’ve heard it play at weddings. I’ve heard it in graduation parties. It’s a big idea and big song.
Hip-hop is getting to the point now where they are going to start sounding like Al Jarreau or Bobby McFerrin or some of the other poets. Some of the better rappers can rap real fast without even melodies. It’ll get to that same point.
If we want to mumble rap, we can mumble rap.
Atlanta is a very good scene for the type of music I’m making. The biggest radio stations are all trap or rap stations. All the clubs are just based around this music and just the southern sound, that’s what I really love about the city.
I love rapping. I do. My styling’s similar to Missy Elliott – I think she’s so dope. In a weird way, that’s how I first learned the American accent: doing American rap songs.
I don’t feel that rap has been respected as an art form. Because people have seen rappers rap off the top of their heads, they don’t think it is difficult.
I don’t consider myself to be bigger than nobody else in this game, so I’m not here to tell people what to rap about.
In my house, I don’t just always listen to rap.
A rap is a tweaked version of comedy, because comedy came first. People weren’t spitting before they were doing comedy. Comedy has been relevant for years. It’s the same art form, pretty much. Discovering that and applying it, I think that has made my stand-up better.
I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.
It’s certain rappers that can really rap, that really spit all bars, so I understand why someone would say, ‘You not a real rapper.’ But the main thing is, if you can make good songs, who cares? So I don’t know why guys be tripping on Drake. He makes great music. He’s dope.
One hundred percent, all your Shakespeare training serves you in the work in musical theater today: specifically in modern musical theater, our soliloquies, and now what we call rap. It’s the reason it’s so easy to learn, because it’s verse; it’s rhyme! It just sticks in the soul very easily.
I want to show other girls how happy I am and how confident I am, how I still want to go to school and I still want to rap.
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.
In India we are creating mainstream hip hop music, than what real rap music is. The lyrics aren’t that personal, since most of the music is catering to Bollywood. It’s just trivial. It’s a fashion here.
In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.
I don’t blame other people for the rap that Christians have. A lot of Christians are just mental. A lot of Christians are more concerned with telling you where you’re gonna go when you die than what you can have while you’re here.
I have no idea about the state of rap. I don’t pay attention. I just listen to old music that I have.
I’ll dance to anything: Bob Marley or rap.
I don’t have to put out another rap record. I can do it at my casual pace.
My biggest influence is rap. It spoke to me, probably because of my upbringing in Christiania. You listen to ‘The Chronic’ and you can hear that anger and frustration.
The Dallas rap scene is growing, and hopefully we get to a level like Houston – everybody supporting each other, building each other up to be great.
With Rage, we wrote riff rock and had rap vocals, so we didn’t really concern ourselves with melody for the most part.
Rap is supposed to scare soccer moms.
With ‘Acid Rap,’ I allowed myself to be really open-minded and free with who I allowed into my musical space. I wanted to make a cohesive product, but I also just want to make a bunch of dope songs inspired by whatever sounds I liked.
I look at old performers like James Brown: back in the day when you actually had to work hard to get poppin’. I look at all those types of performers. Even like Kid n’ Play and the Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff and Salt-N-Pepa. That era where they had to perform. You couldn’t just rap. It had to be an entire performance.
Once I get into the locker room, I turn on stuff to get me hyped up. Mainly, it’s a lot of rap music.
I hope people describe my music as lyrically driven, cross genre. Kind of alternative, kind of indie, kind of rap, kind of everything.
It’s not only about the rap lyric. Today, people are buying you as a person.
Violence is a part of America. I don’t want to single out rap music. Let’s be honest. America’s the most violent country in the history of the world, that’s just the way it is. We’re all affected by it.
I love the playfulness and braggadocio that accompanies a ton of rap music – that’s basically what makes up the foundation for most rappers. But there is nothing ‘weirder’ to me than someone who has never doubted themselves.
I’m kind of a boring person. People think I get to travel the world and I rap or whatever, but I’m pretty boring. My life is pretty crazy enough, and when I’m not on the road or doing something, I’m kind of boring.
From the beginning of my rap career, since I was seen and heard, I always had a store.
Everybody was always telling me to rap and freestyle. I used to go to the park and spit on the mic. If I go to the park, they always gonna give me the mic.
Came from a song that I made from, like, 2012 – there was some phrase like ‘Rap Monster’, and I just, I thought it was so cool. But as I grow up, and as I came to America, I think it felt like too much. So I just abbreviated it to ‘RM’, and it could symbolize many things. It could have more spectrums to it.
I didn’t ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that’s exactly what I’ve gone and done.
My favorite band of all time is The Clash. The thing I love about The Clash is they started out as guys who could barely play three chords. They dabbled in reggae, punk, rap, jazz. They came to a sound that could only be defined as The Clash. It was impossible to say what it was. I admire them for that.
I’m not a horrorcore rapper. I rap my life, but I love horror movies.
I really wish that I would have gone to college. Even my son, who’s into rap himself, I tell him and tell his children, ‘Go to college. Get that education – it is so important. Don’t do like I did.’ I had all this singing on my mind, and I just didn’t have time for it.
The rap game is kinda crazy, so I go with the flow but make sure that I cover my bases and do whatever to make sure I’m good no matter what.
I’m into the lyrical side of rap. I listen to some old Eminem songs and think, ‘Wow, he’s a genius.’ He’s one of the greatest poets of our time. Even when he’s out of control, like on ‘Cold Wind Blows,’ it’s incredible.
The problem is that rap is so often a caricature of its own image. Nobody comes to the table with the seriousness of the effect that it can have; nobody is prepared for that.
Before I even started listening to rap music, I was really into metal and punk.
People need to realize that because black people have been established in the U.S. for a lot longer than in the U.K., the culture’s a lot more embedded. We will get there with how comfortable they are with rap in the mainstream, but we’re way behind them.
I’m rap’s vigilante. I’m out for justice.
America has a rap sheet. You can’t police the world and tell the world how to act when you’re just as bad yourself.
I want to be a rap icon.
I’ve been called everything. Gangsta rap. I’ve been called conscious rap. You know, everything. Whoever feels like calling it whatever they want to call it, that’s on them.
If women dabble in rap but they’re not rappers, to get from dabbling to doing it is really difficult, confidence-wise.
I love Lady Gaga and I love Katy Perry and R&B and rap music… I love big, American pop music.
