A Quote by KRS-One

I find it fascinating how hip hop as a culture mirrors every mythology from the beginning of mythology. The concept of the single mother and child - the Madonna concept. Hip-hoppers were raised in that.
If I were to critique myself - step out of KRS objectively and look at him - I would say that KRS has introduced the concept of being hip-hop, not just doing it. The concept of rap as something we do, while hip-hop is something we live. The concept of living a culture. Don't just look at hip-hop as rap music, see it as a culture.
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.
When I say hip-hoppers, I mean black, white, Asian, Latino, Chicano, everybody. Everybody. Hip-hop has united all races. Hip-hop has formed a platform for all people, religions, and occupations to meet on something. We all have a platform to meet on now, due to hip-hop. That, to me, is beyond music. That is just a brilliant, brilliant thing.
I think hip-hop could help rebuild America, once hip-hoppers own hip-hop... We are our own politicians, our own government, we have something to say. We're warriors. Soldiers.
I am trying to get folks outside the hip-hop culture to understand why, despite the negatives, young people find hope and refuge in hip-hop. I'm hoping that young people immersed in the culture will work harder to capitalize on the possibilities for great social change that hip-hop represents as a national unified cultural youth movement.
Hip is to know, it's a form of intelligence. To be hip is to be update and relevant. Hop is a form of movement, you can't just observe a hop, you gotta hop up and do it. Hip and hop is more than music Hip is the Knowledge, hop is the Movement. Hip and Hop is Intelligent movement
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.".
You gotta understand a lot of hip-hop kids are going to have the hip-hop mentality. And it's sad because they're not educated enough to understand what hip-hop culture is really about.
Skateboarding is a part of Hip-Hop culture. I think it's the fifth element of Hip-Hop - emceeing, deejaying, b-boying, graffiti, and skateboarding. Skateboarders live and die on the streets. It's expression - it's everything that Hip-Hop is.
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.
I wake up hip-hop, Go to sleep hip-hop, Dream 'bout hip-hop, 'Cause I AM HIP-HOP.
Pop culture mirrors culture, and, I think, as a rapper, hip-hop in a lot of ways mirrors the things that are happening in urban neighborhoods.
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.
Quentin Tarantino is a hip-hop artist. I told him, 'You're hip-hop!' You keep seeing surprises, and a clip here and there, because Quentin is hip-hop. A hip-hop artist will drop a single, leak something over here, and drop something over there 'cause he knows it's hot. He's on the spot with the way he does things.
Quentin Tarantino is a hip-hop artist. I told him, "You're hip-hop!" You keep seeing surprises, and a clip here and there, because Quentin is hip-hop. A hip-hop artist will drop a single, leak something over here, and drop something over there 'cause he knows it's hot. He's on the spot with the way he does things.
In this time, we incorporate money and media, and it's split up like apartheid, where when you say "hip-hop," you think just rap records. People might have forgot about all the other elements in hip-hop. Now we're back out there again, trying to get people back to the fifth element, the knowledge. To know to respect the whole culture, especially to you radio stations that claim to be hip-hop and you're not, because if you was a hip-hop radio station, why do you just play one aspect of hip-hop and rap, which is gangsta rap?
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