A Quote by Madlib

As far as hip hop, I ain't even gonna front, it was 'Rapper's Delight.' That was the first thing I heard where I was like, 'Whoa.' You take that beat and do something over it. I started collecting records after that, old records.
Even though hip-hop started as a battle format, different artists appeared on each other's records or hung out in the same clubs, supporting each other. That was a profound influence. Also, hip-hop, to me, represents limitless possibility. Hip-hop is always evolving. People say, "Oh, it's a very commercial thing, it's too R&B." But in six months, a record is gonna come out that will completely change that.
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.
Being in this game if you are gonna sell drugs and make records too then as many records you make is gonna be as many people that know you sell drugs. We got the hip hop cops listening now.
For us, selling a million records in 2005 is the equivalent of selling 2 to 3 million records (five years ago). Rock records aren't flying off the shelves like they used to. Hip-hop and pop are so huge. (But) everything's on the upswing for us.
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.
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?
My dad would play me all of these records: Miles Davis records, John Coltrane records, Bill Evans records, a lot of jazz records. My first exposure to music was listening to jazz records.
I think that people have been claiming hip-hop as being dead since the moment it started. I think there are people - and I can be included in that category sometimes - that get frustrated feeling like maybe the industry has handcuffed itself, or trained its artists to do or think about music in a way that classically hasn't led to the greatest records in hip-hop.
My mom had wild records, like Luther Vandross, Michael Jackson and the Whispers. But the first record I bought was 'Rapper's Delight.' It had a sky-blue cover with a rainbow. My aunt gave me money to get it, and I played it over and over on the record player.
I've put out records over the years, whether it's with Blackfield or No-Man or Bass Communion or Porcupine Tree, that are pop records, ambient records, metal records, singer-songwriter records.
The thing about hip-hop is, like, that the instruments were taken out of schools. But - you might have taken the instruments out of schools, but we'll take the records and sing over them!
I was a huge fan of '90s hip-hop, and a lot of what they got their music from was funk and soul records. They just, like, take a clip of that and rap over it because, you know, that was just kind of what was up.
I loved music. Music was a big thing and so I started collecting records. I had a large collection of jazz records and that was something else I used to listen to. At night, there was a - what the heck was his name? There was a famous - Jazzbo Collins, I used to listen to at night, and some other guys.
I'd like to see people pay attention to the science of hip hop. The knowledge part, the political side of what hip hop could do, or where hip hop is gonna go. I always say it's gonna become universal as we become a galactic union.
I always say to people that I left hip-hop in '97, meaning that I departed from listening to predominately hip-hop and just started really getting into records from the late '60s, early '70s. And once I made that change, I realized how much great music was made back in the day, and it started to become apparent how much we've lost in music.
Island Records was the first record label to... acknowledge me. After that, quickly, Republic Records, and then Atlantic Records, Sony Records and Warner Bros. It was all the labels at once. It was absolutely insane, like, knowing that this many record labels were interested in me.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!