I've been writing songs since I was 10 years old and always had a penchant for rhyming. I started listening to hip hop through my friends and fell in love with it.
In Vietnam, we can go and get big audiences, and we've been going there for so long. A lot of other hip-hop groups don't even go.
I love to dance. I think it's so much fun! I love classic Motown, hip-hop, pop, whatever has a good beat and is uplifting.
Nineties hip-hop was a big influence for me; it still is. I love '90s everything. And it's when I was born, too. I'm a '90s kid for sure.
The funniest thing in the world to me is the idea of a white guy in his thirties going, 'Wait - I'm going to go into hip-hop.'
We took dancehall and hip-hop and mixed it in the middle. I knew we had something. I thought, 'This sound is Puerto Rican sound.'
I'm not the one to pat myself on the back or even need somebody else to give me credit, but I listen to a lot of Hip Hop now and I hear the Too $hort influence.
I was a little hesitant to do 'Love & Hip-Hop' because sometimes reality TV can be good for your music career and sometimes bad.
Heltah Skeltah-meets-Portishead would be like the Brand New Heavies Hip Hop album, something like that. That's dope, word.
I just feel like that '90s era was pretty special from all aspects. Whether it was hip-hop, R&B, it was a lot of music back then that everyone could relate to and listen to.
Someone at Tidal came to our show in New York in 2016, and I guess he was expecting, like, K-Pop. But he was surprised: he saw we were doing R&B and hip hop authentically.
Jazz is all about being in the moment. Whatever the music is making you feel, jazz gives you the freedom. That's the same genesis as hip-hop.
The thing about places like Trinidad and Jamaica is that they can be very musically insular. There isn't much space for kids making hip-hop, electronic music, or hybrid genres.
I think comedy is incredibly discriminated against. It is one of the most enjoyed yet most condescended art forms in the world. It's the same thing with hip-hop.
As a white teen, I was very drawn to hip-hop culture, almost to the point of disappearing in it - there was a sense of having no sense of authenticity except this one that wasn't mine.
Having grown up far, far away in a small country town in Australia, I was only slightly aware of hip-hop.
There are all the offsprings of people who are influenced by punk. It sounds completely different - but it's still rock 'n' roll. When hip-hop came on the scene, it was the last legitimate creation of a new genre.
The new-school hip-hop generation exists with a mandate to 'keep it real'; this has to do with embracing a hard-nosed truth about the world and letting the chips fall where they may.
Every hip-hop artist I have worked with has a respect for higher power, whether that's church, Allah, or any sort of higher being - they all have a humbleness.
I think that hip-hop is more of an individual effort. That means you're an artist from the streets, they expect you to rap about the streets, because that's what happens there.
The moment I made that decision to get in the studio and actually work and study the culture of hip-hop, then everything just started to open up and blossom for me.
Every day I walk down the street or hop on the subway, I am reminded that I am a citizen of a very big, incredibly diverse world.
I'm not trying to change the face of hip-hop music. I'm trying to make my records and always take the next step for me.
I liked hip-hop, wanted to do rap, and wanted to stand on a large stage. If you look at it in another angle... it's something that I chose.
I'm not a pioneer of hip-hop; I just saw it and said, 'This thing is incredible, and these people are incredible. They should be exposed all over the world.'
I want people all around the globe to know that there are girls in Asia, like me, who like hip-hop and dress uniquely.
We can come from our own particular point of view and lay it down. We should not be throwing verbal rocks at each other. We're all responsible to continue the growth of Hip Hop.
It's a hell of a relief. Especially for a dude like me who is so hands on and I like to pretty much all the way hip-hop. So it's difficult when you're dealing with the majors.
I never wanted to do rap-rock because it had been done loads in the '90s, but I love hip-hop and I love metal.
My husband travels a lot with his job, so we have a lot of frequent flyer miles so we can hop on a plane with no notice. That's a nice luxury and he is very supportive.
In hip hop no one cares. No one stands up for it and it's a mess. We need order so we can all follow the tradition of where we came from. We need to keep referring to the pioneers.
I started singing because it was a natural evolution in hip-hop to me. Without Prince, I wouldn't have embraced that. I wouldn't have been able to embrace me.
I try to tell the truth in my lyrics; write good melodies and make hard beats. So, basically, I just combine hip-hop with melody. That's how I classify myself.
Hip-hop has a feeling element, it's not just about knowing music. It's not like classical music or jazz where you can go on raw energy.
Whatever form of hip-hop you like, man, love it and keep it going. Keep it strong. Make sure it stays powerful.
When I first started out, I was really attracted to having my own sense of style because I started swing dancing, lindy hop, and jitterbug.
If you speak to young kids anywhere in the world, hip-hop is the music that they like to listen to more than any other type, so the influence simply cannot be underestimated.
Hip-hop is just bombarded with a lot of materialistic stuff. When a group like us with more creativity comes out, I think it will make some kind of change.
The hip-hop that we grew up on is dead to a certain degree. I'm trying to keep it alive though, it's alive in the underground, but don't nobody know about it.
Wolves never look more funny than when they have lost the scent and scrabble to find it again: they hop in the air; they run in circles, they plow up the ground with their noses . . . .
Historically, hip-hop is about a generation of artists rapping about the realities they see in their neighborhoods or the 'truths' they hear growing up in their homes.
You know, hip hop is a big ferris wheel that goes around and you've just gotta be able to maintain yourself while it's going around.
This idea that my work is about hip-hop is a little reductive. What I'm interested in is the performance of masculinity, the performance of ethnicity, and how they intermingle across cultures.
I do get freaked out sometimes. I have kids hop my fence, get into my back yard, and just start screaming at me.
I wouldn't even say the internet is a gift and a curse for hip-hop. All types of music are bootlegged, including movies which are bootlegged.
At the end of the day, you want to be always the one that's one step ahead of everybody, and when it comes to hip-hop, culture and art, you want to be that signature guy.
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.
People need to understand that hip-hop that has gun talk is just for entertainment; similar to if you were watching a movie. Film schools don't have anything against movies with violence.
The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community.
In high school, I was selected for NASA's Math & Science program. I'd hop on the yellow school bus and head up to Cape Canaveral.
When I say a spoken Hebrew sentence, half of it is like the King James Bible and half of it is a hip-hop lyric. It has a roller-coaster effect.
I'm a tomboy at the end of the day, so anything that causes me to have to run around, fight people, roll in the dirt, hop a fence - I'm all for it. So I really would love to do an action film.
There are a lot of singers, but they weren't doing it the way I was, taking an Adele song and putting a hip hop beat behind it to make it a different song.
I usually have more than one thing I'm working on at once - I've been working on three different novels. When I get stuck on one, I hop back and forth.
You know, if you think about it, the most powerful people on this earth probably never raise their voices - they just say it and people hop to, because they have that power.
Graffiti has an interesting relationship to the broader world of hip-hop: It's part of the culture, but also in a weird way a stepchild of the culture.
When my friends were listening to hip-hop or R&B, I was in the crib listening to Billy Joel and Michael Bolton, Luther Vandross, and Oscar Peterson.
The difference is that they [Europeans] don't have that culture about hip-hop as a lifestyle, a way of life; for them it's more of the new trend, the new music that you have to like.
For a long time I wasn't actually listening to pop. But when I got back into electronic and hip-hop stuff, I rediscovered my passion for pop music.
I actually grew up break-dancing. When you break-dance you listen to hip-hop and rap, so I've been listening to that music since I was a kid.
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