Top 1200 Rap Quotes & Sayings - Page 20

I looked at the rap community like street kids wanting their own brand. But now I look at that period with the rappers in the 90s as a trend of the moment. What it taught me was never to follow a trend, because trends move on.

When I see things that are inspiring, I must write a song about it. Some people make a t-shirt or slap something on a wall with paint, but I must make music and freestyle rap.

Everything is organic. I got the wordplay, I got the vocabulary to really, really rap.

I had every major label in the world - I mean, any label that dealt with rap music wanted to sign me. I ended up going with Jive Records because I liked everything about 'em.

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.

Rap was forbidden with the people who were interviewing us and the shows that I was getting [booked on], and I had kind of crossed over. So Jerry [Heller, who managed N.W.A.] would tell me, 'Do not say you're a rapper, always say you're R&B.'

My own rapping skills are quite good, actually. You get this thing, I think it's called Songify or AutoRap, and you talk into them, and they auto-tune it and make it into a quite interesting musical number. And I got one where it builds it into a rap.

What is feminism? We are just asking for equal opportunities, nothing beyond that. It doesn't mean that you cannot be pretty or you cannot cook or you can't do a whole lot of things. Feminism's got a bad rap; that's it.

I didn't want to do an electro-class album or complex rap album. I wanted to do something that was kind of like a political statement, but also club jams. I wanted it to be dancy, but intelligent at the same time.

People are taking a second look at Compton or rethinking what they believed to be true. Even the rap stars who helped established Compton's reputation worldwide are older now, and even their images have evolved.

It's funny: I've seen a lot of the rock attitude come into play in the rap world, where it's like they're angry, or there's this defiance going on, and there's a lot of danger, and it's actually really encouraging; they're opening the door for us to kind of move on in again.

I'm a private person so wasn't the type of person who could talk to people and be like this is going on at home, I want this shirt, this girl don't like me, etc. I just rap about it!

I hate to get on the racial thing because that's something I've always been totally against. But the problem with the media is that they think that the word rock means white and the word rap means black.

I'd dropped out of high school without really doing it on purpose - I'd just go home at lunch 'cos I didn't have friends, then stay there all afternoon listening to rap. It got to the point where I wouldn't have passed even if I'd gone back. I was depressed, basically.

When I was in fourth grade, I started writing a lot of poetry, and eventually, someone in the church was like, 'You should switch this over to rapping.' I went home and did that - started putting my poems over rap.

We create music to express ourselves and when the world relates, that's a beautiful thing. We're all trading off each other's culture, so no matter what lines you put--country indie rock, rap, we're all somehow gonna find a way to come together.

With rap music, because it's all so on the street, you get treated like a street cat: "All right, you've been eatin' enough, you're fat, get out of the way now and let somebody else come by."

My writing process is consecutive, like, 'mad scientist' crazy. It's not totally writing something that rhymes or even writing a rap necessarily. Sometimes it's just writing down stuff that I'm going through.

At this point I feel like I could go out and accomplish anything. I'd just love to see Will Smith's face if he found out I, Z-Braff, have the number one rap album in the country. That'd show that no-talent uncle tom.

I can do so much more than rap with the rest of my life. there's so much more in this world.

I think that when it comes to emceeing that there's so many different approaches. You have your party rappers, which pretty much is where it all originated from. With DJ Hollywood, Lovebug Starski, Eddie Cheeba, and all those guys in the '70s. Basic party rap.

By some estimates, 80% of rap music is bought by white youth. And this makes for another irony. The blooming of white alienation has brought us the first generation of black entrepreneurs with wide-open access to the American mainstream.

I've been a Christian for a long time, and I think that Christianity gets a bad rap. I think that people's perception of what a Christian is today is something that is close-minded and narrow, and that's not what I am.

I think I'm pretty regular. I try to keep it pretty regular; I go to sleep early. I don't know what distances me from other rap artists - I haven't met a lot of 'em.

If I wasn't in the rap game, I'd probably have a key knee-deep in the crack game. Because the streets is a short stop: Either you're slinging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot.

I think that a lot of battle rappers have a difficult time making songs because they don't know how to do a song format. They're so stuck in that whole battle rap mentality that really all they want to do is just kick rhymes.

The industry is starting to be more open to what we do. I just don't want us to be boxed in whatever people assume Christian rap should be. We're dudes who love hip hop, and we love Jesus, and that's going to be apparent in our music.

I think that 'Pinata' album is going to stand the test of time. It's going to be a moment in hip-hop, whether people know it or not. It's nothing else like that in rap. It's going to forever hold its place.

I do think musical-theater actors can get a bad rap, and I see why. There is a certain slickness - there's nothing better than an amazing musical, but an okay musical can be one of the worst times you've ever had.

People who mock rap and say, "I don't like it," they should go and check out Kanye [West] in the studio rapping, or Marshall, Eminem, when he's in the studio. It's a phenomenon. Don't knock it until you've seen it. It may not be your cup of tea, but don't ridicule it.

I could have easily got T-Pain or anybody like that, but let me just get somebody very left. That'll wake them up. Gaga. She's never done a rap record before. Pay attention. It's a method to my madness.

Yeah, I record on voice memos. I got like 1,000-something memos. If I'm in the middle of something and I can't get it done, I'll jot it down, but I never write a rap out, ever.

That's the beautiful thing about the saxophone. It can peacefully coexist with just about anything - whether it's hip-hop, rap, rock music, pop, R&B or jazz, there's a place for the saxophone in all of those styles.

[Clowns] gotten a really bad rap in the last few years. People have really given into their own fears and have celebrated their fears in that way. American Horror Story didn't help.

People in my family and camp who grew up listening to rap music love 'We Are Young.' I've heard it play at weddings. I've heard it in graduation parties. It's a big idea and big song.

I loved Debussy, Stravinsky, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, anything with romantic melodies, especially the nocturnes. Nietzsche was a hero, especially with Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He gets a bad rap; hes very misunderstood. Hes a maker of individuals, and he was a teacher of teachers.

A lot of times black folks look for love in all the wrong places. You're always looking for somebody to love you, be accepted, and there's the insecurities that are even transmitted through rap. Everyone is trying to aim to please too much.

I'm making good money but I ain't rich. Even if I don't wanna rap I still gotta work. Pride don't feed the babies. I'm going to do whatever it takes. As long as my fingers and toes move Im'ma get money.

If you notice the videos I been shooting in the past, it's always been relevant to what's going on. It's always been a different look for rap as far as I'm concerned.

Rap and spoken word have reawakened the country to poetry in itself. Texting and Twitter encourage creative uses of casual language, in ways I have celebrated widely. But we've fallen behind on savoring the formal layer of our language.

With freestyling it's not about "Say something funny!" That has nothing to do with it. It's about becoming quicker on your feet and knowing that your entire day can go into your rap if you're on it.

We Gonna Win' is a song of triumph, It represents my personal belief that with hard work, talent and dedication, everything is possible. It's a one of a kind marriage between rap and classical music, where the music doesn't accompany the vocalist, but rather stands on its own.

Rap is rock 'n' roll. Rock is when you push the buttons in the system; when you say, I'm not going along with what you're saying. That's rock, whether it's done with guitars, or it's done with just beats.

I can't look at TV without seeing something that's been influenced by rap. Even commercials for cereal. When I was small, I was a fan of cartoon characters - now the cartoon characters are rapping!

The Cash Money sound pretty much changed the era. It kind of put the business into rap. It was like, 'Get your money, dude. This is a billion dollar business.'

Jazz isn't as profitable for labels like Hip hop or Rap. Jazz needs subsidies to continue, just like European classical works of Bach and Beethoven are subsidized.

I feel like science fiction can get a bad rap sometimes because people make something just to throw an alien in it or just to make it weird, and it doesn't really have a story.

I love R&B and hard-hitting, slappy, intense music with deep chords and moody chords. But I also have a thing for bubbly lullaby music. Kind of like ice-cream truck rap.

Do you see how Jerry Heller made it work? That is how he combined what we did to make the rap music into mass music. That's exactly how it happened.

I'm a fan of hip-hop. I'm a fan of rap, so anything new that's happening, I'm hip to it.

People's outlook on Kansas City is always like, 'They let you rap in K.C.?' Or 'How's Dorothy and Toto?' They put Kansas and Kansas City together, when it's really separate.

All I really want is a beat from Kanye West. I've met him, and I think he's real cool with us. If I get that beat, I'm going to rap the best verse I ever dropped - even if it's his worst beat.

I cut a rap song once. It was a few years ago for my old show 'Buck Commander,' and it was a song called 'You're Short.' It was about my camera guy. We shot the video in Las Vegas, 'Ocean's Eleven' style!

One thing that I like to do is use words that have never actually been used in a rap song before. I also like to take words that have negative connotations and show their real meaning.

Rap ain't out there for everybody; everybody can't be a rapper. Everybody can't be a singer; anybody can't just be a songwriter, but it may - there's some profession out there you can be in.

I came into the rap game in 1992; my life was changing, but my group wasn't successful; I also saw the biggest rappers in the world die all of a sudden in the ensuing years, so it was a matter of conquering yourself before you can conquer the world.

Something that you can't play in your kitchen is rap. It is done in your neighbour's kitchen.

They had all this talent, and they had no instruments. So they started rap music. They rhymed on their own. They made their own sounds and their own movements.

Lula had Eminem cranked up. He was rapping about trailer park girls and how they go round the outside, and I was wondering what the heck that meant. I'm a white girl from Trenton. I don't know these things. I need a rap cheat sheet.

I don't listen to much rap, really. I can rarely listen to a whole record of it, because musically, it's very formulaic, and oftentimes it doesn't have the best hooks on every track. I like my music to be very musical.