Top 70 Big Daddy Kane Quotes

I totally understand, believe in, and support Black Lives Matter.

I like Ludacris; I think that he’s a complete artist. I think that he makes great records; I think that he is a great lyricist and at the same time I think he knows how to have fun.

There’s rappers out there that don’t even know how to rhyme. They take someone else’s words and go with it. To each his own.

I think that all lives matter, but I think that the reason we say Black Lives Matter is because, for some reason, it seems like there’s a lot of people in America that don’t realize that we want to be treated as equal as police treat a white person that gets pulled over.

You never hear a country-western station saying ‘We have old school artist Willie Nelson in the house.’ They say ‘We have the legendary Willie Nelson.’

I knew how to be a voice for L.A., I knew how to be a voice for Detroit, I knew how to be a voice for London, I knew how to be a voice for Amsterdam.

I’m used to being respected for what I do, and I’ve watched as my peers – Doug E. Fresh, MC Lyte – do the same thing and I remember the ones before me – LL, Run-DMC – how it was for them. I think we were able to achieve what we achieved because we watched the generation before us.

If you’re White then yes, you have White privilege. It’s there for the taking if you choose to use it, you know, just keeping it 100.

I have ultra-strong respect for women that respect themselves.

I feel that in the music industry there are so many artists it’s easy to be forgotten because it’s so cluttered.

I think that Kool Moe Dee birthed Rakim, Rakim birthed Nas.

Life ain’t a piece of cake for me.

He’s definitely someone who helped mold and shape hip-hop with his music. I would put him in the category of James Brown, the Honeydrippers and Chic. He gave the B-boys and B-girls a track to dance to, but it would only be a DJ or an MC who knows who Billy Squier is.

I mean it’s always good to document your history. ‘Cos for some strange reason black history has a tendency of getting lost. So I think it’s beautiful to have the ability to document it.

I had fun working on films.

The flow that I use, I really developed my rap style in the mid ’80s based on Grandmaster Caz from the Cold Crush Brothers, from listening to him. That’s like really who I pretty much patterned my style from and I just really took it to another level once I had the opportunity to get out amongst the world myself.

I hope everybody out here is supporting hip-hop and trying to make it continue on.

My song ‘Smooth Operator,’ I think that’s a real simple, easy, sing-a-long kind of song. It’s not too complicated.

I love when big things happen for Brooklyn.

A kid will be like, ‘Yo, you’re Big Daddy Kane. My father listens to you!’ It kind of makes you feel like one of the Platters or Temptations or something. You feel like you’re super-old. But then again on the flipside it’s cool to see like someone that’s two or three generations after you excited.

Raleigh feels like home. It has before I even moved here. During the late ’90s I just fell in love with this city.

Rap is good for politics because when you make a rap record, you put good music on a track and people listen to you. It’s easier than trying to preach.

Me personally, I think that when I take my time with something, it comes out a lot better, because I can really, really get my point across, and if I see that like, this might be a little too deep, I figure out a way to dumb it down so that everybody can understand where I’m going.

My best album is probably my second one, It’s a ‘Big Daddy Thing.’ I like a lot of the songs on there. It was put together… just the structure of the album was tight.

I think that a lot of times you have artists that try to deliver a positive message.

I wasn’t one of those artists where people throw my song and just dance to it. People actually listened to the lyrics.

It’s the type of thing where, if you gonna battle somebody to prove your greatness, you wanna go to somebody that shares that same seat with you.

I think that when it comes to emceeing that there’s so many different approaches. You have your party rappers, which pretty much is where it all originated from. With DJ Hollywood, Lovebug Starski, Eddie Cheeba, and all those guys in the ’70s. Basic party rap.

I just think it was because I was known as a lyricist that’s what people only wanted to hear that from me. If you’re an artist you have to expand, you have to grow.

Yeah, if you go too far, like there’s some rappers that use words that just be a little too out there, it makes it where someone doesn’t really know what you’re talking about and don’t really have the time to sit and try to understand.

It’s all about the family tree, there’s a family tree. You know Melly Mel birthed KRS-One, KRS-One I think birthed Tupac.

Being acknowledged as one of the best is enough for me.

I got to meet and work with Barry White, Quincy Jones, Patti LaBelle, even.

Eminem is a major star. Em and JAY-Z have achieved things that I have never came close to achieving in my life. They are both major stars in Hip Hop. And to top it off, they are both very lyrical.

I made songs in the late ’90s and the early new millennium that didn’t succeed very well, but songs that I made in the late ’80s, early ’90s, they stood the test of time. I respect those songs for keeping me relevant.

I just wanted to be the best MC. I wasn’t about owning a Bentley. I wanted to be recognized as the illest MC.

Think that I started taking emceeing very serious probably from the very beginning. Because I started as a battle rapper. It was something that I was doing hoping that I could hang with my older cousin.

Rakim is a great rapper, but, you know, he’s not a battle rapper.

I watch a lot of the YouTube battles: Goodz, Loaded Lux, I’m into stuff like that.

White people moving into Brooklyn, I don’t see anything wrong with that. I think that’s fine and I think that’s beautiful, but to hear about certain black people whose rent is getting hiked up so high and they’re not able to get leases renewed. Now that I think is wrong.

Ol’ Dirty used to come out to Queens and spend the night at my crib a whole lot.

I don’t want people to think that I’m bigger or better than anyone out there.

I’m just glad that people look at me as a legend.

If you call ‘Rapper’s Delight’ an old-school record, I agree with you. If you call Sugar Hill Gang old school, I agree with you. Not because they came out in ’79 or ’80, but because in 2002, that’s still the way Hank and Mike rhyme.

To me hip-hop is a culture and I became an MC to be recognized as a dope lyricist. That’s what I wanted to be recognized as. So when I’m writing rhymes I always take it very seriously.

Once you appreciate an art form, you’re open to everything.

I was going to different neighborhoods around Brooklyn battling cats back in – this started in ’82, so that’s like eighth grade. Maybe 13, 14.

Whatever form of hip-hop you like, man, love it and keep it going. Keep it strong. Make sure it stays powerful.

My view is that I would love to see people united and loving one another, working with one another, supporting one another. I think that’s a beautiful vision, so anybody trying to bring that about, I’m all for it. However, I would hate to see people pretending to unite people just for the sake of relocating them.

Rakim is a great lyricist. To me, it was always beautiful to be compared to him.

I went to this club in North Carolina and saw Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings perform. Just looking at the demographics of the audience, I thought it was interesting. A few weeks later, I was at the same spot to see Talib Kweli perform. And 60-70 percent of the crowd were the same people.

I remember Luther Vandross had turned me on to Versace in 1990. I remember a girl ironing the jeans for me and she was, like, ‘What the hell are these? What’s Vercayce?’

Shyheim, I took him on the road with me on the Budweiser Superfest. He was like 15 years old, too young to be on a tour sponsored by a beer company.

I believe that music is infinite.

With New Edition it would get to the point where kids would have their New Edition posters; say like it was in a household of sisters. Each sister would have also have an individual poster of the member of New Edition that they liked. Now that’s star power.

Production-wise, ‘Looks Like a Job For… ‘ is an incredible album. I think that the weak point of the album was really me.

What can I say? I like breaking ground and exploring new things.

I have a lot of love for Long Island.

I’ve always called Puff like the greatest promotion person in this world – for himself and for his artists – better than anybody I’ve ever seen in my life.

I was a big fan of Marvin Gaye, and when my parents were at work, I would get in front of the mirror, put my father’s clothes on and pretend I was singing Marvin Gaye songs.

The Lifted Crew, I think that they’re a great band that plays great soul music. They may have studied a lot of soul, but really, their heart and soul is in hip-hop.