A Quote by Noel Gallagher

I don't dislike rappers or hip-hop or people who like it. I went to the Def Jam tour in Manchester in the '80s when rap was inspirational. Public Enemy were awesome. But it's all about status and bling now, and it doesn't say anything to me.
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.".
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?
I really love rap music. I grew up in the '80s and '90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J - I'm a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships.
When hip-hop was new and raw, it was all about being an MC. You wanted to be respected as a lyricist. But as the years passed and hip-hop became big business, hip-hop became like country, rock and pop. And so you now have people who write the songs for rappers.
The hip-hop that I really connected with was Public Enemy, KRS-One, Ice Cube, and N.W.A. That late '80s and early '90s era. The beginning of gangster rap and the beginning of politically conscious rap. I had a very immature, adolescent feeling of, "Wow, I can really connect with these people through the stories they're telling in this music."
I listen to a lot of hip hop artists, and I think hip hop and poetry go hand in hand. The 'Def Jam Poetry' on HBO is just so sick to me.
A lot of MTV's programming is hip-hop based, and the messages are usually all about bling bling. A lot of hip-hop artists sing about stuff that's more important, but they seldom get heard. The ones who get heard are the ones saying, 'Think about yourself. Make your money. It's all you. Everybody have a good time and party.'
My entryway into hip-hop was - my biggest introduction was obviously like, you know, the Def Jam, Run D.M.C., Beastie Boys, like, that conglomerate.
I had no idea how much the stuff I was doing was affecting people outside Oakland. At the time, also, hip hop wasn't able to tour because all these clubs that let hip hop come in now, they would never have let hip hop come in.
The hip-hop aesthetic and the way it's produced always motivated me. Alongside that I was still wanting to make great traditional songs because I've never had any desire to rap. My love of hip-hop is driven by my love of rappers, but it was built out of my love of producers.
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.
I have always been involved with radio, whether it was as an artist talking to radio about my own songs, or as a promotion man at Def Jam to working records through my company. In 2000 I was asked to host a show in Norfolk VA and through that show I was then asked to host the morning show in Detroit. The concept of the show was around Hip Hop. We were active in the community and we wanted to do a local show that had a hip hop feel around it.
Take emceeing, one of the foundations of hip-hop culture. A guy grabs a mic, steps up on stage and becomes a spokesman; the voice of the people. If anything, that might be the strongest similarity between hip-hop and comic books, with super heroes, like many rappers, fighting to make a change.
A lot of times, when people say hip-hop, they don't know what they're talking about. They just think of the rappers. When you talk about hip-hop, you're talking about the whole culture and movement. You have to take the whole culture for what it is.
Def Jam commented on one of my Instagram photos once, and all my friends me hit me up, like 'Yoooooo, you signed to Def Jam?'
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