Top 30 Quotes & Sayings by DJ Yella

It's true, we grew up in a ghetto. To us it wasn't too bad, but the police brutality was like that. You see three or four black kids hanging out, they pull you over, jackin' you, makin' you get down on the ground.

Most of our songs were just talking about what we had seen in the ghetto. We weren't thinking, 'Oh, this is going to be large and we'll have gold records.' We were thinking it would be local and we'd make a couple of bucks.

We broke up in '91, but we didn't fade out, we didn't burn ourselves out, we were on pause for 26 years. We stopped at the height, we were No. 1 and we just broke up.

I've always loved the recording studio.

Cops are doing crazy things now, and they catching theyselves; bodycams, carcams. But until they really start giving these cops time - 50 years, 100 years - it's not gonna stop. As long as they keep getting off, nothing's gonna happen. It's been going on since before N.W.A.

I made adult films for over 12 years. Apart from the directing aspect, I did all of it - the filming, the editing and the stills. I shot about 300 movies, which was great fun.

When I graduated from high school, I became a DJ in a club, a local hang-out called Eve After Dark.

The first time I saw the Rodney King video, I remember thinking, 'Wow, these cops just got 100 years in jail.' Obviously that didn't happen.

Me and Dre go back so far - a long 30 years - even before N.W.A. The way we talk to each other now is the same way we talked when we first met. No big heads, no ego stuff.

When we were doing music, that's how we did-we just did it for the music. We weren't thinking about money, we weren't thinking about fame. Music was our passion.

We were the underground reporters.

I like being quiet and just having fun.

We never even thought about a Hall of Fame. We never even thought about a gold record, tell you the truth.

I don't see the violence stopping, from the L.A. riots 25 years ago to the Baltimore riots from 2015 to today - at least, not until a cop goes to jail. Until someone gets 30 to 50 years - something substantial - I really don't think it'll stop.

The energy from younger generations is amazing, they go crazy.

If we did another tour, we probably would have stuck together. But a lot of little things happened with people coming in and talking behind the scenes.

I had no idea NWA would blow up as big as we did.

When we were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I asked the guy who runs it, 'How many people in here have had only two albums?' He could not think of one person.

Before the L.A. riots, I'd only heard of the original Watts riots. But I'd also seen violence like that close up, but in smaller scenarios.

Growing up, you always heard of cops beating people up behind buildings and letting them go. Now they just shoot them.

You know, I wasn't a rapper, never wanted to be a rapper. That wasn't my style.

Universal woke us up with a movie called 'Straight Outta Compton.'

When we broke up, the group was Number One on the Billboard chart. I mean, groups don't break up at Number One. They break up at Number 1,000.

Me and Dre did all, from Wreckin' Cru to Ruthless, all that. We started making songs first... back then it was the slow songs, techno, whatever they called it back then. 'Planet Rock,' that kinda stuff.

Dre was a person who could see ahead of the beat. He could see the beat before it was even there. He's like a rare person. Very rare.

I still DJ the same way, but I'm not a scratch-scratch-scratch battle DJ. No, I'll rock the house. I'm old school.

When Run-DMC came to the club, we saw how simple their show was - wasn't even a 10-minute show - and we, like, looked at each other and said, 'We can make records.'

We didn't know anything about publishing. The first go-around we didn't make a nickel.

The early '90s was the best time for hip-hop. The Cube's, the Snoop's, the Dre's - that was a golden time with great music, great albums, great groups, everything.

The truth is that there wasn't much competition. There was the East and the West, but there was really no West before us. We came in so different, so real, that we were immediately heard.