Top 1200 Rap Artist Quotes & Sayings

For you to be able to rap fast and fit many words into a bar, that's what rap is about, the showmanship. That's the thing we're kind of losing now. I'm not saying that the music now is horrible. I mean, I don't listen to it. The showmanship and creativity in rap is what made it special and what made it different.

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.

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.

The big stars in rap, they were too big, so when my rap generation started, it was about bringing you inside my apartment. It wasn't about being a rap star; it was about anything other than.

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 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.

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.

The average rap life is two or three albums. You're lucky to get to your second album in rap!

I was, like, in a rap gang. I loved rap, and it was all around me.

Rap isn't poetry, not least because it involves music and often other elements that aren't words. But the way poets in English use things like rhyme and meter, and the ways these conventions both do and don't apply to rap we try to lay out the rules for rap, in order to understand the techniques that artists like Jay-Z and Kanye employ.

It's not that you don't make any money doing conscious rap music. You make a lot of money doing this, but if you're greedy and you're not satisfied with $500,000 a year, and you want $2 million a year, then you will suffer as a conscious rap artist.

When you talk about rap you have to understand that rap is part of the Hip-Hop culture.

The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.

I never liked socially conscious rap. I like rap that's physical, that's about a beat and bass and repetition.

Rap isn't that time-consuming for me, compared to an ordinary artist. I do not stay in the studio all day.

I've never been massive on rap, but there's that whole kind of culture of U.K. rap.

I mean I'll be retired from rap, so what I'll be doin' in rap will be for fun.

I don't feel that rap has been respected as an art form. Because people have seen rappers rap off the top of their heads, they don't think it is difficult.

As a young artist, especially in rap and at that time that I came out, originality was big.

My music isn't rappity-rap-rap-rap.

The majority of people, especially young people, know Dr. Dre because of Beats by Dre, not necessarily from him being a rap artist.

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

I guess rap has such a bad name, because everybody can do it now, and that's probably why people don't want to be considered as rappers anymore, they're not taken seriously anymore. But yeah, rap is definitely the core of what I want to do. But I'm also an artist so I try to do as many things as I can, but I always keep rap in the equation.

Rap's the only music that they categorize like that. That's one thing that I hate, like, down South rap, or up North rap. Country is just country rather than wherever it's from. R&B, you don't call it Atlanta R&B, you know what I mean. So that's already like a shot at our culture.

I respect cats that can rap and everything, but the artist that inspires me is Turf Talk.

If you're a conscious rap artist and you're worried about Billboard charts, you're gonna have a problem.

Having had been not so well traveled as a kid, as most teenagers aren't, I always thought, "Okay I'm going to focus my energy on rap and the rap game, because that's how I'm going to be able to pay rent and pay off my school loans." But seeing the reaction with this whole gay rap situation has made me not want to play into it at all anymore and just make whatever.

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 think that a rap aficionado, the hardcore rap fan, will always go away from pop, in the same way a hardcore jazz fan will never think Kenny G is really a jazz artist. You gotta kind of know there's always going to be that purist who's going to be like if it ain't beats and rhymes, if there ain't a DJ, then that ain't Hip Hop.

Skateboarding was my introduction to rap and the first rap song that I really liked was KRS-One 'Step Into A World.'

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

That's one of my struggles as a hip-hop artist. If I feel like doing a super conscious song where I don't even rap.

I don't think you have to earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, then art is what you do, whether or not you're paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation.

Without the piano, I would never have attempted to rap, because I'm a poor rapper. I'm enthusiastic, but it takes me a long time to write eight bars of rap. I would battle any pianist, and yet I would forfeit happily before even getting into a rap battle with anyone.

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.

There has been an effect of business rap on the output of today's rap music. But I don't think that's the modern day rapper's fault.

I can't really rap the way rappers rap; I drive a 2002 Toyota Avalon.

I'm at a point where I don't have to wait for the income from the record to survive, so I'm in a comfortable zone, but I'll make rap records as long as I feel I have something to rap about.

I just consider myself an artist. I don't really rap. I don't really sing. I just do what I feel is good, and people like it.

Rap was an outlet for me to express myself. Nobody was trying to hear no R&B/Funk band from East Houston, so I guess I would rap.

You can't expect to be on MTV and critique George Bush. You can't expect to be on BET or the cover of 'The Source' advocating Jesus Christ or Buddha or Hindu Krishna or Moses. As a conscious rap artist, you have to play in the arena that you're supposed to be in. What is that arena? That arena is the college market. The conscious rap artist woos the college market, even though the college market is the wildest, most sexed-out, drug-driven market in the country, possibly the world.

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.

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.

I just want everybody to have fun. When I came into rap, that was my whole inspiration. That's what rap used to be about.

The rap on Obama has been that he is a little too cool and aloof. The rap on Romney may be that he is just plain callous.

I came from the South Side of Chicago wanting to be a rap artist and make videos.

Everybody in the '80s, well, we hate rap. Now, the biggest rapper in the world... Eminem. Rap's a black thing.

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

I have a song that's called 'Rap Dreams, Hoop Dreams'. Besides education, everybody's got hoop dreams from day one in rap. Rap, sports, music have so much of an impact on the world.

Everybody knows with rap artists, if you can't go to the hood, it's almost like you're not authentic, even if you're a dope artist that's respected.

I don't really listen to rap; I just like to rap.

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.

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.

The first rap album I bought was Eminem's The Slim Shady LP so I wasn't even based on West Coast rap like that.

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.

Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.