Rap Quotations | Page 7

A bird in the hand is worth more than a Bush.

I think my fans respect me for bein' as truthful and honest as you can be and still be Rap music and not be opinion music. It's still Rap, its still style, flavor, flair, and people just kind of like how I present myself and the things that I do.

There is a gambling element to being somebody who is going to take on the job of constantly trying to represent and prop up people who might be somewhat shady. That notion is probably part of how they got the rap. But, I have to find the balance of being colorful, being at times despicable, and also being somebody who does believe in something.

As far as rap goes, I grew up in Hollis, Queens, so early influences were people like Run DMC and LL Cool J.

I came into the rap game in 1992; my life was changing, but my group wasn't successful; I also saw the biggest rappers in the world die all of a sudden in the ensuing years, so it was a matter of conquering yourself before you can conquer the world.

Gucci Mane is trap rap's Frank Sinatra.

I've never been into alternative, hipster rap music.

Rap is the only interesting music left - it's the only genre that's still pushing itself, and experimenting in a way that I find exciting.

One of the great things about rap music... it leaves a lot to be desired, as far as I'm concerned, musically, but I do recognize the very important place that it has in music and in creating role models for younger kids to emulate, giving them the dream that they can make it out of whatever situation they're in.

We create music to express ourselves and when the world relates, that’s a beautiful thing. We’re all trading off each other’s culture, so no matter what lines you put-country indie rock, rap, we’re all somehow gonna find a way to come together.

If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be Lyrically, Talib Kweli Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like Common Sense But I did 5 mill' - I ain't been rhyming like Common since.

You could name practically any problem in the hood and there'd be a rap song for you.

I got this black chick, she don't know how to act Always talkin' out her neck, makin' her fingers snap She like, "Listen Jigga Man, I don't care if you rap You better - R-E-S-P-E-C-T me

Put me anywhere on God's green earth, I'll triple my worth. Motherf--. I, will, not, lose.

But this is one of the things that makes rap at its best so human. It doesn't force you to pretend to be only one thing or another, to be a saint or a sinner. It recognizes that you can be true to yourself and still have unexpected dimensions and opposing ideas. Having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is the most common thing in the world. The real bullshit is when you act like you don't have contradictions inside you, that you're so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places.

Cough up a lung where I'm from marcy son, aint nothin nice

The Nets' a stone throw from where I used to throw bricks ...So it's only right I'm still tossing 'round Knicks.

My life after childhood has two main stories: the story of the hustler and the story of the rapper, and the two overlap as much as they diverge. I was on the streets for more than half of my life from the time I was thirteen years old. People sometimes say that now I'm so far away from that life - now that I've got businesses and Grammys and magazine covers - that I have no right to rap about it. But how distant is the story of your own life ever going to be? The feelings I had during that part of my life were burned into me like a brand. It was life during wartime.

Stop screamin', you know the demon said it's best to die, And even if Jehovah witness, bet he'll never testify, D'Evils...

And through our travels we get separated, never forget: In order to survive, got to learn to live with regrets.

Well I'm not just gon' go and do rap songs. I wanna touch, and maybe help, and see what I can do in these areas.' As I start looking around me, looking at things in ways that I can become helpful, starting at the first thing, water. Something as simple as water.

Which is the other reason hip-hop is controversial: People don't bother trying to get it. The problem isn't in the rap or the rapper or the culture. The problem is that so many people don't even know how to listen to the music.

I'm a hustler, baby; I sell water to a well!

Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music.

Screamin' 'Carpe Diem!' until I'm a Dead Poet.

The bar is so low in rap - mediocrity is king!

The radio is just a stereo like a house ain't a home.

My feet might fail me, my heart might ail me, The synagogues of Satan might accuse or jail me, Strip, crown, nail me, brimstone hail me... They might defeat the flesh but they could never ever kill me. They might feel the music but could never ever feel me.

Stick to the script like paper clips and coffee stains Never let a seed of doubt deter you from your lofty aims The will is much stronger than the flesh And it only gets stronger when you going through duress Imagination is the factory that makes legends Close your eyes and dream B.I.G. like Faith Evans

When Rick Perry was told about Kim Jong Il, he said, 'I never heard of him, but then again, I don't listen to that rap.'

The FBI is urging all Americans to beware of any letters or packages that have badly misspelled words. Man, this is going to be terrible news for the rap industry.

Rap is just to me very annoying.

A digital sound sample in angry rap doesn't correspond to the graffiti but the wall.

Lula had Eminem cranked up. He was rapping about trailer park girls and how they go round the outside, and I was wondering what the heck that meant. I'm a white girl from Trenton. I don't know these things. I need a rap cheat sheet.

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.

My life owes me. Like an overdose, I'm slowly Drifting into the arms of trouble, then trouble holds me

Mindless violence, well let me try to paint it. Here's the 5 steps in hopes to explain it: 1, It's me and my Nation against the World 2, Then me and my Clan against the Nation 3, Then me and my Fam against the Clan 4, Then me and my Brother, we no hesitation Go against the Fam until they cave in 5, Now who's left in this deadly equation? That's right, it's me against my Brother Then we point a Kalashnikov And kill one another.

We often seem to be swimming through such a miasma of sexual violence - in advertising, television programming, heavy metal, rap, films, and worst of all, in the home - that even First Amendment absolutists sometimes daydream about how nice it would be to have government-as-nanny just outlaw all this effluent.

It's ninety-six degrees in the shade... Before I catch blood on my blade.

Do some good to the ghetto, Mr. Kris Kringle. Come and stay awhile, kick it with God's Angels. Take and acknowledge my wisdom and understand That Santa Claus is a black man.

I'm not sayin I'm a pothead, cause I'm not. I'm just sayin that I smoke a lot.

Got more milky syllables than alphabet cereals.

I've been college, but to be truthfully frank, weed is knowledge because it makes me think

Y'all mythological niggas is comical, The astronomical is comin' thru like tha flu bombin' you... And embalmin' in your crew, too. With the musical, mystical, magical, you know how I do.

Rap-so many words, so little said.

I don't only like rap music. There's everything from R&B to crazy gangster rap, hip hop... everything! But it all blends together nicely. It's like a magical music rainbow.

I get atomic, hypo-galactical... Word to mom, I'm in my own world. Galaxy rays? Powerful.

I wear black while suckers wear pink.

Business money reattaches worldwide Deep inside stops the diamond rocks In a million world, billion world, quitrillion world Rap moves on to the year three thousand

I thought of rap I thought of Grand Master Flash and I thought of about what they went through.

I didn't think of rap with that type of south feel and that look and the hay and all that.

Rhyme to kill, rhyme to murder, rhyme to stomp, Rhyme to ill, rhyme to romp, Rhyme to smack, rhyme to shock, rhyme to roll, Rhyme to destroy anything, toy boy. On the microphone: I'm Poppa Large, big shot on the East Coast.

I call you once...you never dialed back. Twice...you never dialed back. Saturday morning, live, I'm on Soul Train, talkin' to Don Cornelius. Saturday night, my phone rings... Saturday night, I won't answer. Saturday night, my phone rings again... Saturday night, I don't answer.

Shakespeare's gone, don't even think about it.

Think about it, if you was there standing looking at me. What would you do, if I hit your face with dog doo-doo?

Starstruck with one buck, your girl look like Donald Duck.

You need a bad operation. Gimme the scissors, hammer, flame.

They use the simple back and forth, the same, old rhythm That a baby can pick up, and join, right with 'em. But their rhymes are pathetic, they think they copacetic Using nursery terms, at least not poetic...

I come prepared with the white suit and stethoscope, Listen to your heartbeat, delete beep beep BEEP. Your insurance is high, but my price is cheap.

Infrareds on little people standing with some big heads, I was Captain Kirk, walkin' with a black t-shirt. LAPD, the nurse asked did my knee hurt? I was in pain, little Martians tryin' ta take my brain, Hospitals came, detectives wrote down my name. I was to blame, my life never been the same. A true story; I tell ya, it'll never bore me. My classmate died, my other friend named Cory Drinkin' 40s, he jumped out the project window, Stabbed himself with a yellow number 2 pencil.

Dallas Mavericks want me as a bald-headed 5' 8" guard with a 95" vertical. Vince Carter respect my legs, ask Shawn Kemp.

I drop styles on ears...the public bite 'em. Not many went to school, so the dummies wouldn't write 'em. They say, "Yo Keith! You're Kool, you usin' big words!" I went to college, I'm even more stupid, herb.

Now my helmet's on, you can't tell me I'm not in space.

My fans will tell you all day that I can rap. That's all I need.

So with the freestyles, I just do it for fun. If I hear something that I like, I'm rapping on it.

And if I die before I wake I pray the lord my soul to take But please don't cry Just know that I have made these songs for you.

Everything that shines ain't always gonna be gold

Rap's the occupation, but one day watch I'll be Pimp of the Nation.

I've just really been into melody and lyrics and songwriting. Writing a rap, to me, is easy. I could write a rap like that. But writing songs and melodies and s**t that's hopefully going to stick around for 30, 40 years is f**king hard...If you have good songs and you're talented, people will eventually come to your shows, people will buy your music.

Will Arnett and I were never in the same room, but once I saw early animation we started writing music for that and then he just kind of did his little rap over top, some of it was free form and some of it I made up, we all just kind of contributed to it.

Never say never - you don't know what's going to happen in the future.

Mark my words, my rap career [is] on the rise.

I do lots of weird voices and I kind of act out my raps. That's something that's always been in me.

All rappers predominantly sound the same and want you to think their meanest person in the world, and that they're all gangster and all that. My acting allowed me to be playful and crazy, and it helps me tell stories and all that. I think it's a good time; rap needs that kind of stuff.

I don't know where I fit in the spectrum of rap yet...

I look at rap as an opportunity to act. My head is full of different characters - in each song I'm auditioning a character.

Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.

The literacy level at Mississippi prisons? Fifth grade. Can't read, what are you going to do? If you've got a conviction rap, what are you going to do? It's a real crisis.

We Gonna Win' is a song of triumph, It represents my personal belief that with hard work, talent and dedication, everything is possible. It's a one of a kind marriage between rap and classical music, where the music doesn't accompany the vocalist, but rather stands on its own.

I write pop songs. But I think it is sprinkled with a lot of counter-culture references. It ranged from rap to hip hop to trip hop, house, drum and bass, and experimental and improv and jazz.

(Chicago is) the only major city in the country where you can easily buy your way out of a murder rap.

Think I'll roll another number for the road

I was rapping at eight.

Even where the game is today, cats don't really focus on necessarily what it is that you're saying so when people say, "Oh, you can't rap," I play into the joke. That's why I'll challenge anybody; anybody rapping, let's go just because I know what the art form is and even when you see these battle rappers in here, they're so skillful. It's actually a skill.

Clearly, everybody knows I can rap; I can freestyle all day.

Nobody wants to hear me rap.

Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone, How falls the polished hammer! Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown A quick and merry clamor. Now shape the sole! now deftly curl The glassy vamp around it, And bless the while the bright-eyed girl Whose gentle fingers bound it!

Said I'll make it big when, everybody know me Well, I made it big and, everybody phony

Girl I don't wanna share you We could be together, but you scared to I ain't gonna leave you My people tell me I should And when I blow I hope you know That I could have any girl I choose But as time goes by, baby all I'm gonna want is you

Woman stock is rising in the market. I shall not live to see women vote, but I'll come and rap on the ballot box.

So 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.

Know what you did last summer, so I started hookin'

Niggas is decaf, I stick 'em for the C.R.E.A.M.

I call my brother 'Sun' cause he shine like one.

Valentine cards and birthday wishes? Please...be on another level of planning, of understanding The bond between man and woman and child. The highest elevation, cause we above All that romance crap, just show your love.

There are few things that's forever, my lady. We can make war or make babies.

Now what Clan you know with lines this ill? Bust shots at Big Ben, like we got time to kill.

Let's be honest. We don't take rap serious the way other cultures take rock-n-roll, they take country. They artists are being loved.

At least be a nice lesbian or you're going to give the rest a bad rap.

The art of cartooning is vulgarity. The only reason for cartooning to exist is to be on the edge. If you only take apart what they allow you to take apart, you're Disney. Cartooning is a low-class, for-the-public art, just like graffiti art and rap music. Vulgar but believable, that's the line I kept walking.