A Quote by Ice Cube
If you really think back to the culture or just black America before rap music took off, New York could have been Paris.
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I arrived in San Francisco in January 1951. After the Second World War, the population was so uprooted. Soldiers came back home for brief periods and took off again. So the population was very fluid, and suddenly it was as if the continent tilted west. The whole population slid west. It took 10 years for America to coalesce into a new culture. And the new culture happened in San Francisco, not New York.
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.
I've never been a rap guy, I don't really know that much about rap music, to be honest. I like it, but I think what really happened was just my music seems to work so well with rap music.
In my mind, New York was the place where they had the underground rap shows and I could get in on some ciphers and just rap. This whole fantasy world I had created in my head about New York just from listening to the music my whole life, like, I'ma go up there and do that. But when I came up here, there was none of that, that scene was dead.
I've been living in New York City almost seven years, and my mentality has changed a lot. Just from being in New York this long and going across America, I realize that in New York, nobody really cares. They are just like, "We're New Yorkers." I feel like that is really the way it should be.
New York is a much younger city that drives culture. In Paris, older women drive the culture - really drive culture.
In America, kids would go to college and get out and buy a second-hand car and go across the country and discover America. I never did that; I went from New York to Paris, and New York was my America.
I'm not turning my back on music anytime soon, but it's just a blessing to have options open. A lot of artists just have rap, and that's it. But once rap stops, it's hard to get into that Hollywood circle; it really is. It's a whole 'nother beast that people think they're ready for, but they're really not.
New York has changed a whole lot. For worse I think because back when I was growing up in New York we were always the trendsetters. I don't care if it was from clothes to hip-hop music, to whatever. Right now New York is a bunch of followers. A lot of them are. It's really not the same.
The first time I came to New York - and the first time I saw the movie 'Paris Is Burning' - I learned about the homeless LGBT culture in New York City that goes back to the '80s. I found that very interesting, and it's definitely something that I care about.
I love Mexico because that's where I'm from, but my favorite city, whenever I need to recharge, I love Paris. I get very inspired while I'm there. There's so much art and culture, and Paris, before New York, that was the capital of the world. And I love history too, so I go there. It does something special to me.
Sometimes I live in Paris for a couple of months, then I have a job some place, and then I come back to New York. I guess my base is New York-ish, 'cause my family is here. But my husband's family is all in Paris, so we try to spend a lot of time there, also. Especially now that we have Rose.
Great music can come from anywhere around the globe. And there has always been a music business. It just wasn't recorded, nor was it centered in New York, London, Los Angeles or Nashville but rather St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Milan and Paris.
In America, we happen to be living in a third world country from the point of view of economic and social development. I came back from New York yesterday and I took the fastest train in the country, the Acela. My wife and I took the New York-Boston train sixty years ago - it wasn't called the Acela then - and I think it's improved by about fifteen minutes since then. Any other country in the world would be about half the time. In fact when it's riding along the Connecticut turnpike it's barely keeping up with traffic, which is just scandalous.
New Orleans is just so full of culture in the music content - blues, folk. I was introduced to a lot of things. My mother didn't keep me away from other music. She only kept me away from rap. The closest I got to rap was D'Angelo.
I have to admit I've rarely been happier in my life. I have been absolutely thrilled to be back in New York and living a block from where I grew up. Just to be back in New York and, quite honestly, away from Hollywood has been an absolute thrill for me. I feel like I'm a real actor again.
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