Rap Quotations

It's Christmas time and my rhyme's steady bumpin. Everybody happy, hair still nappy, Gonna steal a gift for my old grandpappy...

Rollin' down the street, smokin' indo, sippin' on gin an juice Lay back with my mind on my money and my money on my mind.

You might win some, but you just lost one.

Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape; that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all I love.

Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

I got tired of the Ramones around the time I quit and I really got into rap. I thought it was the new punk rock. LL Cool J was my biggest idol.

My formative years were in Houston. I was in middle school, and everyone was dropping the last half of their names and adding an 'o' to the end. My little crew that I had, we were an all-female rap group, and everyone had an 'o' at the end of their name. I was Lisso. Then this dude started getting lazy with it, saying Lizzo.

You can still make music that people love, but there won't be more innovation. I started listening to electronic music a long time ago. But mostly I listen to rap. I think rap is the most interesting.

I remember rap music. We used to party and dance off of it. Today it's all about a whole different angle... Rappers are going against each other, and it's more of a bragging, boasting thing.

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 do like alternative rock and rap, but as far as inspirational, then I go full-on orchestra. It fills up your entire being.

When Elton John sang a duet with the white rapper Eminem on a Grammy telecast, rap went mainstream. Massive parental headaches followed.

Times were changing. Clothes were changing. Morals were changing. We went from romantic loves songs like I used to do to rock 'n roll. Now that has changed to rap. So, there's always a new generation with new music.

But, Eminem... No, I've loved rap for a long time, especially when it got out of its first period and became this gangsta rap, ya know this heavy rap thing? That's when I started to fall in love with it. I loved the lyrics. I loved the beat.

I think young adults get a bad rap for being self-absorbed and self-centered. My experience going around the United States and speaking in schools is that teenagers here are very interested in the fate of their peers around the world.

Many elitists hate rap as much as they hate country, though they don't like to admit it for fear of appearing racially insensitive.

I follow politics in a big way, and always have since I was a kid. I've got opinions, but they're opinions on both sides - not just anti-Republican, which is a real popular thing for a rap artist to do. If you dis Republicans, nobody will get mad. I think the two-party system sucks. It's absolutely ignorant.

I don't even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate, because it defines our limitations.

I originally wanted to embrace the imagery and forthrightness of rap music. There are some interesting, dynamic voices in rap. But I find most of it irresponsible in its overt violence and commercialization of anger. As artists, we believe we can will action through language. If that's the case, we have to take responsibility for what we say.

I started rapping since, like, 14. But I've been obsessed with rap from when I was 11. I heard 'Baby Don't Cry,' I'll never forget.

I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important.

It's bad poetry executed by people that can't sing. That's my definition of Rap.

Happiness has a bad rap. People say it shouldn't be your goal in life. Oh, yes it should.

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.

My mom eventually told me if I wanted to be in the music industry, I should start writing my own songs. At that time, I was in junior high and had no idea where to start - I was writing joke rap songs with friends. Eventually ,I wrote my first song in high school, and my mom took me to go record it with one of her band member friends at his house.

I was mostly surprised by the rap artists, actually, that were influenced by Sabbath. That was a surprise. But it's very nice and I'm very honoured. It's nice to know after 27 years now that what I said in the first place has stuck, and that was the belief in it.

I could never rap, personally. I can't even wrap presents.

When I got into rap I didn't exactly win any popularity contests. I called myself Dee Dee King, after B.B. King, to the total dismay of my fellow Ramones.

Gibberish rap is - I freestyle all the time, just hangin' out with friends. And sometimes when I'm freestyling, I'll lose my flow, you know, but I'll still wanna - I don't wanna just stop rapping because I lose my flow. So I'll just put in nonsense words till I can bring in regular words again.

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!

You don't really gotta rap no more; you can just say the verse with a swag now.

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.

If you stay in one place, you can only rap about one thing because that's all you know.

I started DJing, breakdancing and MCing in the '70s and I got my record deal in 1979 with 'Christmas Rap.'

I mean I'll be retired from rap, so what I'll be doin' in rap will be for fun.

I love rap because it talks about pain that comes authentically from the ghetto. It moves me.

I haven't done rap... I can't do that too well.

I didn't get into rap to be no lyrical genius. I got into rap to feed my family and help the people in need around me, that's it. A lot of people say, 'Man, Waka Flocka ain't go no lyrics,' so I was like, 'Yeah, you right!'

I always felt really alone because no one wanted to talk about the things that I enjoyed, and that was really rap music and hip-hop as a culture. You know, having the shoes, using the words, buying the magazines, seeing the videos. And I had nobody to share it with, so I feel like I lived a lot online.

I kind of remember a friend of mine saying, like, you guys should make a rap record. You know, because we were already making punk records. We were a punk band. And I kind of thought, that's crazy.

An MC is somebody who can control the crowd. An MC is a master of ceremonies so not only can you say your rap, you can rock the party.

There is no singing anymore, everything is yelling and shouting and rapping and that is real boring to a guy like me.

I just don't want to be rapping forever. I love it, but sometimes you got goals for yourself.

There's no way I can compete with someone who can write rap or rock and roll. Nor do I wish to. But I've always kept up to date with music changes. I worked very hard not to type myself.

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 started rapping when I was about 12 or 13, just playing around with it.

It just happens to be that people like to associate poetry and rap music. I think that idea is kind of corny.

Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall.

I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music.

Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way. And I grew up in rap and movies the same way.

I enjoy staying home with friends more than going out. The other night, for example, my girlfriends and I stayed in listening to some '90s rap - my favorite kind. We were in the Hamptons and made it an all-Biggie weekend, all of his albums on repeat. I loved it.

When I hear music that parents hate, or older musicians hate, I know that's the new music. When I hear older people saying, 'I hate Rap or Techno' I rush to it.

I go to a lot of stand-up comedy. I find more inspiration from observational stuff than from rap.

They that will not be counseled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you on the knuckles.

I was born in San Francisco. I was raised in Oakland, so I'm, like, super Bay Area born, and, you know, it's just really multicultural up there, and there's a lot of subcultures just from, like, anything, like from rockabilly to, like, crazy punk scenes to, you know, a huge rap scene, and there's just all kinds of things you can do out there.

I was probably 15 when I started going to the studio with the older cats in my neighborhood. They heard me rap outside one time; I was just freestyling. And they invited me to the studio. It's good when you're accepted, no matter what crowd. That's the first step of believing you can do whatever you feel like putting your mind to.

I think rap music is rap music. I mean, are there heavy writing aspects of it? Absolutely. In a sense, is it poetry? Yeah. I've heard that so much, growing up in a house with poetry. But I think people like to use that as a shortcut for who's good and who's not. It's like the word 'lyrical' - 'lyrical' is the worst word in the entire world.

A lot of the music, and especially rap, I don't understand.

Rap is a gimmick, but I'm for the hip-hop, the culture.

I listen to music for emotion and I get zero emotion from rap.

Escapist literature gets a bad rap. But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.

My mama always used to tell me: 'If you can't find somethin' to live for, you best find somethin' to die for.'

In my mind, not in real life. My rap name will be Optimus Rhymes. Or the Notorious B.o.B.

Imagine the first time you are about to rap in a studio and you find yourself in a booth with Redman and KRS!

My name is Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the former H. Rap Brown. I am a devoted servant of Allah, and an unwavering devotee to His cause. For more than 30 years, I have been tormented and persecuted by my enemies for reasons of race and belief.

I can rap in a London accent, make weird faces, wear spandex, wigs, and black lipstick. I can be more creative than the average male rapper.

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.

Government workers often get a bad rap, but it's rare for them to receive much appreciation when government works.

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.

Rap is hardcore street music but there are women out there who can hang with the best male rappers. What holds us back is that girls tend to rap in these high, squeaky voices. It's irritating. You've gotta rap from the diaphragm.

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.

I feel like the rap metal at the end of the 1990s destroyed rock music for everybody and suddenly everybody felt like they had to apologise for being in rock bands. People suddenly felt bad about wanting to reach massive audiences and the sense of theatre, that we have in our live show, became something to avoid.

Rap is really just too conventional. Everybody does the same thing. No one ever pushes the box.

Rapping and singing are not two polar opposites. There's so much middle ground. And I think there's a lot of people who find that middle ground.

When you've been raised in care, rap music isn't just about guns and sexism. They're talking about real things you can hang on to, problems of identity that you have sympathy with. It's not just about the music, with rap: when I was in care, it meant a whole lot more than that.

It would be pretty funny to see a Beverly Hills white girl with mad rap skills.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I'm just like, 'Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do'.

David Bowie's my favorite musician. I love him above all, but I'm really into rap a lot right now.

People were talking while I was playing, so I got up and left the stage. I've gotten to the point where I'm not really very patient with patrons rapping during the show. And the people were all nice and quiet when I cam back.

I'm not turning my back on music anytime soon, but it's just a blessing to have options open. A lot of artists just have rap, and that's it. But once rap stops, it's hard to get into that Hollywood circle; it really is. It's a whole 'nother beast that people think they're ready for, but they're really not.

Lil B opened up the floodgates for Odd Future, and now rap has a huge Internet culture.

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.

Baseball players have such a bad rap of, like, 'We don't work out or we're not strong or this or that.' Guys work so hard in baseball, it's incredible. But people don't know that.

I never really thought I was going to be a singer, honestly. I never listened to singers; I always listened to rap music.

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.

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.

Rap is rhythm and poetry. Hip-hop is storytelling and poetry as well.

A lot of the stuff I've accumulated over the last few years of touring I thought was really interesting. Like sounds, sound bites, and beats even, but they weren't good dance beats they weren't ones anyone would want to rap over or anything.

I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.

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.

Growing up listening to rap music, you almost feel like you should have haters. That's an important part of being a successful musician. It's a good thing, I guess.

I love my city and I feel like the majority of the people that are in the city are people from other cities. So I think that L.A. sometimes might get a bad rap because it's known to be so Hollywood-oriented and then underneath that you have crime. But that's really the case in pretty much any major city that you go to.

The difference between blues, jazz, rock n' roll and rap is that rap stayed poor. Even the white rappers are poor. It's scarier to look at poor people; it makes everyone uncomfortable. Their pain is something that people would like to see swept under the rug.

I don't like rap that you can't understand. The youth is so quick and alert.

The weird thing about rap is that you don't get compared in the same way that athletes do, even though it's probably the most competitive sport in music. In basketball, they look at a player and say: 'This guy was the best in his prime at this sport.' But in rap it's not until you're dead or retired that people think about it like that.

I couldn't do rap. I was trying. I don't know how. I'm not good enough to know.

I got into hip hop from my uncle; he was always playing us Kool G Rap and Big Daddy Kane. He was a bad boy, and my mum was not really happy that I was hanging out with him.

Rap is poetry to music, like beatniks without beards and bongos.