A Quote by Alex Ebert

Hip hop was definitely, far and away, the primary influence for at least 10 years of my life. From about 7 or 8 on till about 15 or 16, that's all I listened to. — © Alex Ebert
Hip hop was definitely, far and away, the primary influence for at least 10 years of my life. From about 7 or 8 on till about 15 or 16, that's all I listened to.
My mother's records were formative for me, but when I became a teenager, I wanted to find songs that she wasn't hip to. She was so hip, though, that I had to go outside rock n' roll - so for about 10 years, I only listened to hip-hop, house and techno.
15, 16, I mean, 17, 18, is when I was really getting into the hip hop phase and really studying the things that I needed to study as far as learning about flows and learning about lyrics.
There needs to be structures in place to do something about misrepresentation about hip hop. When awards are given out and the media talk about hip hop, they're confused because they haven't done their homework on it so you have a case where there's an award for the most pop song in the world and it's called 'hip hop'.
I feel like everything I do in the hip-hop world has an influence. People don't really notice what I did until somebody else does it. As far as hip-hop goes, I want to continue to make good music, and good art. I don't really follow the state of hip-hop.
When hip-hop was new and raw, it was all about being an MC. You wanted to be respected as a lyricist. But as the years passed and hip-hop became big business, hip-hop became like country, rock and pop. And so you now have people who write the songs for rappers.
To me, that's the biggest problem with hip-hop today is the fact that everyone believes that all of hip-hop is rap music, and that, when you say "hip-hop," it's synonymous with rap. That when you say "hip-hop," you should be thinking about breakdancing, graffiti art, or MCing - which is the proper name for rap - DJing, beat-boxing, language, fashion, knowledge, trade. You should be thinking about a culture when you say, "hip-hop.".
I think hip hop is dead. It's all pop now. If you call it hip hop, then you need to stop. Hip hop was a movement. Hip hop was a culture. Hip hop was a way of life. It's all commercial now.
As far as hip-hop is concerned, I'm no expert and rarely think consciously about how I "represent" hip-hop.
You'll be fooled if you only get your hip-hop from the mainstream, you know. The things that move people are not just found in the mainstream cultures. And when we talk about hip-hop in general, hip-hop's basically preoccupied with life.
This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It's all hip-hop. You can't say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.
Somewhere down the line, the evil ones stole the legacy of hip hop and flipped it to a corporate type of hip hop. They decided to tell everybody 'Well, this is what hip hop is,' instead of coming back to the pioneers and getting the true definition of what hip hop is and what it was and what we been pushing for all these years.
I grew up with, maybe not the best hip-hop in the world, but a lot of hip-hop. Will Smith was, like, my jam when I was, like, 9 or 10 years old.
Hip-Hop is diverse. But the white, capitalist producers and distributors of Hip-Hop are most interested in the Hip-Hip that is misogynist, that is Black-hating, that is pugilistic, that is to say all about fighting and war and killing and gangsterism.
We can teach about hip-hop history, we can teach about legends, hip-hop theory. It's been around so long that text books can be written about it. This is a perfect time to capitalize on and get kids excited about music education.
Growing up in Miami, I had all these great, strong influences. Being Cuban and the Latin influence, but also the strong hip-hop influence. I know that people everywhere listen to hip-hop, but especially being from the South, you really get that influence. You go out, you party, and it's just always there.
I am a huge hip-hop fan, and growing up, I only listened to hip-hop, so I dressed accordingly.
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