Top 1200 Gangsta Rap Quotes & Sayings

As we all know, the evil of slavery and the sting of the whip have given us many things including the voice of Nina Simone, the prose of James Baldwin, the Air Jordan sneaker, the blues, jazz, moonwalking, and more recently gangsta rap.

I just want to put my stamp on all kinds of music. Everything I do is going to be gangsta rap, street-based, street-oriented.

I believe a lot in gangsta rap, I see in it a lot of positive things as it is. I believe it is only about doing politicization work. Revolutionary change will come from there, it won't come from conscious rap.

The only thing intimidating about Cube is that he's the father of gangsta' rap. You just worry about getting your lines right, or he might shoot you.

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?

Gangsta rap often reaches higher than its ugliest, lowest common denominator, misogyny, violence, materialism and sexual transgression are not its exclusive domain. At its best, this music draws attention to complex dimensions of ghetto life ignored by most Americans. Indeed, gangsta rap's in-your-face style may do more to force America to confront crucial social problems than a million sermons or political speeches.

I don't own a gun. I'm a pacifist. I am a critic of commercial gangsta rap music. I don't believe you change people or their flawed perspectives from a distance. You open their minds from up close, when they realize you respect and love them.

I've been called everything. Gangsta rap. I've been called conscious rap. You know, everything. Whoever feels like calling it whatever they want to call it, that's on them.

God damn, it's a brand new payback From the straight gangsta mack in straight gangsta black How many motherfuckers gotta pay Went to the shelf and dusted off the AK Caps gotta get peeled Cause "The Nigga Ya Love to hate" still can "Kill at Will"

Gangsta Rap is dead. I've moved on. And the raps that I'm rappin to my community shouldn't be filled with rage? They shouldn't be filled with same attrocities that they gave me? The media they don't talk about it, so in my raps I have to talk about it, and it seems foreign because there's no one else talking about it.

Part of my affinity with urban music comes from being on 'Kids Incorporated,' 'cos we used to sit around and listen to Chaka Khan and Prince, and I got influenced by all that. Then gangsta rap got started, and I was infatuated with that - maybe that's why I'm fascinated by guns.

Gangsta rappers can't fight, so they rap about guns.

In a way, all recorded music is reduced to the same level, no matter what it is. You find it in the store, you put it on and, "Oh, that's not cool. That's gangsta rap. That's white supremacist punk." But in a way, the content is removed from the intention of the people that made it. That's the commercial level of music.

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.

I don't listen to rap all the time. Even though I rap, rap can be nerve-wracking.

As a matter of fact it wasn't until after BIG passed and stupid rumors went around that I had something to do with it, and it's like I'm not a killer man , I'm a musician, I'm a DJ we got like a different heart. Ya know back then when rappin' was fun, and we could immolate being gangstas; ya know Dr. Dre made the hardest gangsta rap records in the world, that didn't necessarily make him a gangsta. It was all like ya know : character, we were all in character.

Rap has so many possibilities that need to be explored. There are different factions of rap, but some are in a rut. Rap doesn't have to be about boosting egos and grabbing your crotch and dissing women. There's a way to make political and social issues interesting and entertaining to the young rap audience.

You gotta do a lot more than rap. Rap is not just rap. If you don't have an image, you're not capturing nobody's attention.

We should remember what a rapper like Tupac Shakur was doing, to a certain degree, who came from an experience of politicization very close to being a "Panther Baby". He knew, he came from that experience of the Black Panthers, and accounting for all his contradictions and process of growth, he achieved politically through gangsta rap things that no conscious rapper has achieved, such as establishing political, ethical, and moral codes between Crips and Bloods in the United States.

Gangsta rap was the most important movement since the beginning of rock n' roll.

To me, the 90's signaled the end of glam rock, the beginning of gangsta rap, and hopefully the beginning and end of boy bands.

I guess, like, I've always listened to rap, and I remember I specifically started listening to, like, pop-rap when I was, like, 11, you know, like Shaggy. I love Shaggy. And then I discovered, like, underground rap when I got to high school, and really, that's when it kind of blossomed. I don't feel like my love for rap blossomed off of Shaggy.

As long as there's a demand for gangsta rap, it will be supplied.

'Gangsta rap' is a derogatory label.

Gangsta rappers, they call them. Not nearly as gangsta as the things that inspire them.. you know, a gangsta government that we operate under.

Who gave it that title, gangsta rap? It's reality rap. It's about what's really going on.

I don't consider myself a gangsta rapper. But I'm probably more qualified to be a gangsta rapper than people who call themselves that. I've been through that life.

I bet? Eazy E is turning over in his grave, to see that some of ya'll done made gangsta rap gay

For all my proclivities for thuggery, I am a typical middle-class dad. I'm a gangsta rap suburban father!

Every time you see someone sticking up a 7-Eleven, the kid's wearing a hoodie. Every time you see a mugging on a surveillance camera or they get the old lady in the alcove, it's a kid wearing a hoodie. You have to recognize that this whole stylizing yourself as a gangsta - you're going to be a gangsta wannabe? Well, people are going to perceive you as a menace.

There's a lot of guys in the league that make music and it's hardcore gangsta rap. None of us really live that life and you can't talk about being a thug.

Rick Ross is bigger to me than Dizzee Rascal. My music is more gangsta rap than anything English.

I can't say enough good things about my band. I feel very fortunate that I found them when I did, very early in my career. Not only are they just great, nice guys; they're some of the best musicians you're likely to find. They do everything from gangsta rap to polka music and every genre in between. It's amazing.

Everything I do is going to be gangsta rap, street based, street oriented... I'm from Gary, Indiana, and everybody's damn near at the poverty level.

We gotta flip the script on what a gangsta is - if you ain't a gardener, you ain't gangsta.

I don't call my music 'gangsta rap.' I call my music reality, something that really happened, something that has really happened, something that will really happen, something that could really happen. It ain't nothing that I'm making up; I think that's why people listen to it.

Poverty brings people to drastic measures and that's what the hardcore gangsta rap scene is about. It's called freedom of expression. People should be allowed to express what they've been through, what they've been able to familiarize themselves with.

I've always been noted for being original and doing different thing. So for me to hop on the train that's going on would be - shoot, if I wanted to hop on the train, I might as well have hopped on gangsta rap back when it was popular and tried to do that.

Rap, rap! upon the well-worn stone, How falls the polished hammer! Rap, rap! the measured sound has grown A quick and merry clamor. Now shape the sole! now deftly curl The glassy vamp around it, And bless the while the bright-eyed girl Whose gentle fingers bound it!

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.

90% of the people that rap are just rappers, they rap what they see, a lot of them exploit other peoples lives, I've been through it all, I don't glorify it cos when I was in jail, I wasn't like YES I'm in jail now I can say that in my rap.

I always do my rap from the outside looking in. Like I do my rap as if I'm looking at me rap.

I love rap lyrics, I love hearing people rap, I love molding a thought or idea into the shape that fits on a rap beat.

But, Eminem... No, I've loved rap for a long time, especially when it got out of its first period and became this gangsta rap, ya know this heavy rap thing? That's when I started to fall in love with it. I loved the lyrics. I loved the beat.

There are rap groups that have a positive outlook in their art. These groups should be shown as an alternative to gangsta rap.

We have to remember that the experience of gangsta rap as such in its foundation is an anti-systemic experience primarily. And it is an anti-systemic experience that is not in some cases politicized, but in general results in a much more transgressive, much more uncomfortable music for the structures of power, than conscious rap or political rap.

I don't stick up for Al Sharpton often because I consider him an agitator, but Sharpton's views on 'gangsta' rap have been consistent and clear.

I thought that God and rap would never work. I thought that God wasn't okay with rap. People knew I used to rap, and I went to the Bible studies. Someone said, 'Hey, you should rap about Jesus.'

I rap when I'm rich. I rap when I'm broke. I rap when I'm bullshit in the street. I rap about only having one woman now. If you can look at a continuum of my career, it's been an evolution of a real dude. So when I say I take my wife to the strip club, we're there, at the five-dollar joint. More than anything, I want people to take away that I'm not mainstream act.

Hey, you gotta love a gangsta girl. Even the suburban and preppy girls wanna be gangsta girls. That's the whole gimmick to it. Everybody wants to be a gangsta girl.

I feel like when it comes to rap - like, real rap music - and knowing the pioneers of rap, I feel like there's no competition for me in the NBA. Other guys can rap, but they're not as invested or as deep into actual music as I am and always have been. I think that might be what the difference is. I'm more wanting to be an artist.

What is MTV doing and what is the hegemonic culture industry promoting in gangsta rap? It is the glorification of violence for the sake of violence, the violence itself, like consumption for the sake of consumption, hypermasculinity writ-large with an adapted potency.

I actually don't like hip hop much; the music is too clichéd, the subculture, especially the macho strutting of gangsta rappers, isn't my thing. But, at the same time, rap is a simple, direct and strong musical language.

I'm not a gangsta rapper. I rap about things that happen to me. I got shot five times. People was trying to kill me.

Rap is hardcore street music but there are women out there who can hang with the best male rappers. What holds us back is that girls tend to rap in these high, squeaky voices. It's irritating. You've gotta rap from the diaphragm.

Gangsta rap was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. Gangsta rap didnt exist.

I believe gangsta rap, as such, in its foundation is simply anti-systemic and transgressive.

I can't stand rap....people who can't sing do rap....you can sing rebellion as well as talk it....Hitler would have been in a rap band.

If the KKK was smart enough, they would've created gangsta rap because it's such a caricature of black culture and black masculinity.

Sonnymoon and Quadrants are a couple of bands that really inspire me in terms of the melodics of things and certain tones and just what feels good. It takes me back to the type of music that I grew up on in my household. We played a lot of gangsta rap, but we also played a lot of oldies, and I think that mix is part of what inspires my sound.