A Quote by Kano

There were eras of English music where people tried to rap in American accents and we lost our way.

Kano

Quote Topics

Accents American American Accent English English Music Eras Lost Music Our People Rap Tried Way Were

Quote Author

Kano
British - Musician
Born: May 21, 1985

I think people are really picky about English accents. When a Brit comes over here and kind of does an OK American accent, everyone's like, 'You were great! Fantastic!' But in England, even if you were doing a pretty good accent, they're like, 'But where are you from?' 'London.' 'What part of London?' Accents are really precious over there.

Lee Pace

People have asked me why are Australians and Brits so good at American accents, and it's quite simple. We grew up listening to the American sound on our TV. That's why American actors have a hard time with foreign accents.

Dominic Purcell

I don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited.

Stewart Copeland

Rap isn't poetry, not least because it involves music and often other elements that aren't words. But the way poets in English use things like rhyme and meter, and the ways these conventions both do and don't apply to rap we try to lay out the rules for rap, in order to understand the techniques that artists like Jay-Z and Kanye employ.

Andrew Hoberek

I think it's cool to do stuff in a different language. Basically, I learned English through listening to rap. A lot of people think it's funny. But it's true; I used to try to get the accents.

Wyclef Jean

I never tried to emulate that New York rap style. What I do is a quasi rap. It's a honky rap, not a black rap. I find it puzzling that so many people have assumed I'm black.

Murray Head

When you're trying to bring the streets into rap to prove a point, then you already lost. You separate the two, and that ain't to be played with. You've got people that lost their lives and people that are doing real time. If we gon' make music, let's just make music.

Young Jeezy

They thought we were just basically keeping ourselves underground on purpose. And it was just strange for people to approach music that way. And for rap, trying to get recognition, and be seen as a regular form of music like anything else. I mean, the Soul, R&B, Rock 'N Roll, they would dis the hell out of rap when it first came out.

Ice Cube

I came to realize,people who had Chinese accents will continue to have Chinese accents in America are treated as being stupid or not as intelligent as an English speaker who is fluent with an American accent - I came to realize why. But it's always fascinated me how quickly you can change where you stand with another human being just based on how you speak.

Trevor Noah

Through my youth, there was imposed on us a culture relentlessly English. English books were all you could buy; English television filled our screens, and in consequence, England seemed to matter in a way that our world didn't.

Richard Flanagan

I was, like, 12 or 13; the first hip hop song I tried to rapping to was Macklemore's 'Thrift Shop,' and my English was so bad, but learning to rap to different songs really helped me with my pronunciation, and looking at the lyrics on Rap Genius and stuff like that.

Rich Brian

People are very ready to criticize other people's accents. There's no correlation between accents and intelligence or accents and criminality, but people do make judgments.

David Crystal

You know, jazz is the mother of all American music. R&B and pop and rap and everything are the branches on the main tree of the life of music, American music, which is jazz.

Eric Burdon

It's a challenge getting rid of an accent by yourself. I have parents that have such thick accents. They are like, "She sounds fine." They didn't know. To them, I spoke perfect English because their accents were so heavy. I don't even want to know what I sounded like. I don't want to know!

Odeya Rush

I think a lot of American fans or people that read about us - they think that we're trying to be a part of the American culture, like all these Swedish kids that love America. We rap in English, so I guess there's something, but we're very Swedish, actually.