Top 36 Emcee Quotes & Sayings

You can find old Jewish newspapers from Detroit that have my promotional ad in them. It was a totally insane time in my life. Paul Rudd was also a bar mitzvah emcee, you know? It was like being a local rock star in Detroit.

When I was growing up, to be an emcee meant to write the most clever, intellectual, and wittiest rap. And that's what we did.

One of the things I think you need to be a good emcee is silliness. And I'm basically a silly guy.

To me, part of being an emcee is dedicated to speaking out about what's going on around us.

I emcee how I feel for the moment. I'll always be influenced by Tribe, but my EP and LP have a lot of different flavors! I'll keep it vintage Tribe if Tribe decides to do another LP... which, in my heart, I'd love to do for the fans.

Actually, I started as a ventriloquist and my music teacher said, "Why don't you emcee the talent show?" My act was out of the back of Boys' Life magazine-they had a whole series of jokes in the back of Boys' Life magazine for Boy Scouts. So my act was jokes with my ventriloquist figure, and it was really bad, but I walked into the classroom afterward and the kids went, "Wow, you're cool." I wasn't cool at all, but I thought, "Well, this is a pretty good deal."

I was an emcee for bar mitzvahs from age sixteen to twenty-one.

When I worked for Entertainment Tonight I got to emcee Paul McCartneys press conference.

It's a total big difference between a person that got lyrics and a person that can make hit singles. I'm a person that can make some hit singles. I'm not in no booth trying to be a lyrical genius. I'm preparing to make me some singles, and as I develop as a man, then they'll respect my emcee skills.

When I worked for Entertainment Tonight I got to emcee Paul McCartney's press conference.

I just enjoyed bar mitzvahs as a kid, and there was this company in the Detroit area where I grew up, and I think they recruited me as a party dancer - you know, like, you dance around and pass out glow sticks. I quickly rose in the ranks and, within a year, became an emcee, which was kind of unheard of.

I think all those artists are artists who are appreciated because you believe their words and you appreciate their honesty in their music. If you don't appreciate the honesty in the music, the beat can be fly as hell but you'll never give an emcee props.

Too many MC's take that word 'emcee' lightly; They can't Move a Crowd, not even slightly.

I emceed in metro Detroit throughout college, and even when I moved to New York, I would actually fly back on a Friday, emcee on a Saturday, and fly back on Sunday so that I could audition during the week. It was a big part of my life.

If you're a battle rapper on the block, the emcee battle challenger, not writing your rhymes could really hurt you. When you're an artist where maybe the focus is really the talent and the different things you bring to the game, I believe it's more understandable.

It was funny to be an emcee, because you're so at the mercy of the club. You can show up for the weekend hoping to get the $400 - and get fired. I had to prank whoever they told me to prank.

Gimme a couple G's for every emcee I knocked to his knees. Verbally useless, 'Oh you got the juice?' I squeeze you juiceless.

Before 'Insecure,' I was a wedding emcee - a host for weddings. That's a world that a lot of people are not familiar with.

The best way to compliment an emcee is to say his lyrics. That's how you say, "Hello."

Being an emcee onstage is mostly about crowd control, about monitoring energy levels.

A lot of the old-school artists didn’t even respect what’s being called freestyle now... any emcee coming off the top of the head wasn’t really respected. The sentiment was emcees only did that if they couldn’t write. The coming off the top of the head rhymer had a built-in excuse to not be critiqued as hard

He was not hip-hop's most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all, he was more than the sum of his artistic parts.

I've got to show at all times that I'm willing to tear any emcee a new asshole, at any given moment.

The subject matter of the show, 'Cabaret,' was more than risky. And the emcee I would be playing didn't have a single line of dialogue. Still, it was full of possibilities, and it was mine.

Executives are convinced that a rapper has a certain lifespan as far as being a hot emcee. When you start to approach your 30s, pretty much stereotypically it's over.

If you can perfect the booth, the stage and just your persona, like maybe in interviews and when people talk to you, then you're a full well-rounded emcee in my opinion.

I always write to the moment. I've always been that kind of emcee. I don't wanna come in with all the paperwork and all o' that or whatever. That's good when you just an emcee from off the block that really don't have to work as hard as the next man. But when, you know... Y'all make me write like this, from, I guess, me makin' a classic and everybody callin' my stuff classic material - that makes me have to work ten times harder. But a lot o' times things just happen at the moment for me: spur o' the moment. That's just how it goes sometimes.

A good emcee will rhyme a lot of different ways. Don't limit yourself.

Brandy is one of my favorite vocalists. Jay-Z is my favorite emcee outside of Biggie.

An emcee is a Master of Ceremonies. If you're an emcee, and I am an emcee... I rhyme, you know what I mean? I do things for my fans that still appreciate me, let them know what's coming.

So in my personal opinion, I definitely feel like I'm a legendary emcee, and I also feel like we're a legendary brand, which is why I started rebranding ourselves years ago by saying 'The Legendary Roots Crew,' which is how we're introduced on 'The Tonight Show.'

I break an emcee off proper Yo don't check me, Ask your Moms and Pops, Yo they respect me, But here you stand, tryin' to get yours, but gettin' nothin' You probably can't spell "Boogie Down" or "Productions"

We was just young guys who wanted to change. We got tired of doin' this same everyday bullshit that we was doin', and we all felt like we had dreams o' bein' a big star. You know, as far as with myself, I never really took it that serious as bein' a star. I only took it that serious as bein' a emcee, which is two different things. You know what I mean?

What if you believed that everything in life was like a prize? What if you thought of the world as a big random drawing, and you were always winning things, the world offering them up with a big grin, like an emcee's: Here you go, Hollis. Here is a motorcycle. Here is a little boy who loves you. Here is a weird experience, here is something bad that you should mull over because it will make you a better person. What if you could think that life was this free vacation you'd won, and you won just because you happened to be alive?

I didn't know at the time that the energy that I was giving off was like a battle Emcee.

When 'Joy Luck Club' came out, I kind of became a role model for the Asian acting community. I started to talk at colleges and emcee charity things. I'm much more connected to my sense of being Asian now.