A Quote by KRS-One

Record companies feel they are the culture. Hip-hop has to begin to define, protect, and promote itself, and that's why we founded the Temple.

KRS-One

Quote Topics

Begin Companies Culture Define Feel Founded Hip Hip-Hop Hop Itself Promote Protect Record Record Companies Temple Why

Quote Author

KRS-One
American - Musician
Born: August 20, 1965

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.

Tracy Morgan

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.

Bakari Kitwana

This is more in regards to celebrities. What we've got to understand is that we are the influencers of the hip-hop culture, the black culture. We are the way out, you feel what I'm sayin'? As far as who we look to and where we get stuff from - hip-hop culture is influencing the world, really, but especially the black communities.

Demetrius Shipp, Jr.

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?

Afrika Bambaataa

House, rap, R&B, disco rock, they are all part of hip-hop culture. Why you ain't playing Kraftwerk along with Jay-Z? That's hip-hop.

Afrika Bambaataa

That's what my music... I'm working on a solo record right now, it's gonna be more hip-hop than anything, like electronic hip-hop, futuristic hip-hop. I'm probably gonna be rapping on it.

Alan Vega

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.".

KRS-One

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.

Taboo

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.

Yelawolf

Hip-hop is limiting itself and that also goes for editorially. Magazines and websites are the gatekeepers of what people think hip-hop is, but they actually end up limiting what hip-hop can be.

will.i.am

Man, I feel like hip-hop is - first of all, not even only with just GOOD Music, I gotta say - I think hip-hop is still alive in a strong way, man. I feel really enthused about hip-hop.

Common

I think that hip-hop should be spelled with a capital "H," and as one word. It's the name of the culture, and it's the name of the identity and consciousness. I think hip-hop is not a product, but a culture. I think rap is a product, but when hip-hop becomes a product, that's slavery, because you're talking about people's souls.

KRS-One

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

KRS-One

More than half of all the hip hop record sales are white people, and I think that might be a result of my record helping people to accept hip hop.

Vanilla Ice

After many years of hip-hop as a nation we should have the sophistication to accept that their are distinctions between the corporate manifestation of hip-hop, sold as a commodity and package with sensational race, sex and violent imagery, and the hip-hop culture that kids are living everyday at a local level, which often doesn't dabble in that terrain.

Bakari Kitwana

The Temple of Hip-Hop makes sure that we don't just approach hip-hop just through music or through rap. We approach the totality of hip-hop.

KRS-One