Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Some of you been trying to write rhymes for years, But weak ideas irritate my ears. Is this the best that you can make? Cause if not, and you got more...I'll wait.
That's another thing yo rappers are scared to bring new styles out. There's so many different ways we can be flowing but everybody chooses to flow the generic way.
Take 7 emcees put em in a line And add 7 more brothers who think they can rhyme It'll take 7 more before I go for mine And that's 21 emcees ate up at the same time.
I'm everlastin, I can go on for days and days With rhyme displays that engrave deep as X-rays I can take a phrase that's rarely heard, FLIP IT Now it's a daily word
I go up in the supermarkets and people always go what are you doing here and I go I'm hungry in a sarcastic but nice way just to let them know yo I'm human too man.
I always gave my moms and pops the utmost respect. I didn't talk back to my peoples. The way they presented themselves to us, we knew. Don't talk back to moms and pops.
Whenever I sat down to write something it was never anything I took lightly. It was something that I'd want you, somebody in Japan, and somebody [over there to hear it].
I never went to college. I think about it a lot. I can't watch a game without thinking where I would have been if I had ga head and went to college and pursued my career.
I always wanted to kind of make the listener feel like it was them that I was talking about, or to the point that I could say the rhyme, and feel like it's them saying it.
The laws are gonna have to change. And it's 2016. We can't keep using all the laws that was made back in the 1700s. We're gonna have to understand that times have changed.
I got one of the illest crews in NY but when I travel it's mostly me and my girl, me and my kids or me and one or two of my dudes but the majority of the time its just me.
I've always tried to insert consciousness and spirituality in my records, interpreting the writings of all cultures and religions and how they apply to life in modern times.
I always had an intelligence with me, I was always in the streets, I was always trying to do good. I was always looking for something to guide me. In the beginning church wasn't it.
I don't believe in writer's block. I'll get stuck, but being stuck, I'll still write a verse. If you know where you're going, you can always start from there and work your way back.
So all hail the honorable, microphone phenomenal Persona is unbombable? Trust me son, I continue like a saga do, bringin' you the drama to allow you that the chronicle has just begun.
Being in this game if you are gonna sell drugs and make records too then as many records you make is gonna be as many people that know you sell drugs. We got the hip hop cops listening now.
I was an underground artist, but the underground status was successful. Coming from where I came from to see where rap is now, now artists are selling from a million to eight million copies.
My aunt Ruth Brown was a jazz musician. I got hooked on it at a young age, understanding what John Coltrane was doing playing two notes on the saxophone at the same time, which is impossible.
Sometimes I see where I want to take the song and wind up at the end and come back to the beginning. I don't miss nothing and everything is good. Everything I thought of is incorporated in it.
I go to Queens for queens to get the crew from Brooklyn, Make money in Manhattan and never been tooken. Go Uptown and the Bronx to boogie down, Get strong on the Island, recoup, and lay around.
Before I started rapping and touring I weighed about 160. But by going on the road every night eating fast food, performing every night, partying and drinking I started gaining weight immediately.
Social media gives a lot of people a platform where they can express their feelings. I like to do mine through songs. I let info build up. In some way, it translates into paper whenever I sit down.
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!
I'm not a mainstream artist. But I've seen my kids being born; I've seen them take their first steps, I've seen them grow up and start school. That's worth more to me than any umpteen million dollars.
Without no disrespect to any artist, there's a lot of degrading music out there as far as degrading the culture and degrading society as well. That's individuals that choose to make that kind of music.
I had a lot of respect for Prodigy. He brought the hood to the booth. When we were trying to shape this rap thing into something, he was one of the cats I respected for bringing the hood into the booth.
I started studying in '85 and got knowledge of self and started spitting. What was going on was taking the understanding of what I was reading and applying it with my life and applying it with my rhymes.
When me and Eric did songs back in the day, we didn't go and sit down in front of no A&R. We made our album, and then, when we finished, we handed it in, and then we picked the best song for the first single.
When I was in high school, the energy in hip-hop at that point was the park energy... I was just trying to develop my style at that point, and I think, when you're trying to find your style, you find yourself.
I don't want to put nobody on blast but in the beginning it's like somebody telling you somebody looks like you and you've been looking in the mirror your whole life and nobody looks like you. Same thing with me.
A lot of times when people listen to music it's because they feel down, and that's when serious hip-hop comes into play. When times is hard, people can hear a rapper that inspires them to do what they [are] supposed to do.
I never really liked the idea of doing mixtapes but at the same time it was a big thing a lot of people were doing it and it almost got to the point where if you didn't touch the mixtape circuit it was like you didn't care.
I try to stay true to my style, and I understand the foundation of my style and where it came from. But at the same time, you take that experience and learn different ways to write, different ways to turn on that creative energy.
What I want to do right now is give hip hop back to the hood. Before it was a neighborhood thing where it belonged to the hood and the rappers were reporting and there were rules and parameters. Now it seems like the artist's game.
There's things in the Bible when you read the Quran there different wordings. The Quran is dealing with the Most High and the Bible is dealing with God. If they read them both and put it together they'll know what the true culture is.
I think rap was a better move for me but football's been my love since I learned how to walk. I was gonna be a running back or quarterback. That was my life. That was it but things happen for a reason. I wouldn't trade this in for nothing.
I never wanted to do the mixtape circuit and 300,000 people hear it and that's a chapter of my life and when I do another album I'm coming off of that chapter but the whole world didn't hear that chapter so it's like I would have to start over.
My moms is strictly Christian but once I got knowledge of self and started reading she used to love when I would sit there and tell her some of the things that I learned. It gave her an open mind to where she started believing in the most high.
Being a new artist, I was trying to make a good album and hope that people like Kool Moe Dee and Melle Mel and some of the firstborns appreciated it. I was being influenced by them brothers there. That's where I got my start and my first listen.
My approach to writing rhymes went hand in hand with the music. I'd try to make different rhythms with my rhymes on the track by tripping up patterns, using multi-syllable words, different syncopations. I'd try to be like a different instrument.
There are certain things that I wish people knew - certain things that I feel I started and certain things that I'm responsible for. Sometimes you wish people knew where a certain style of rapping came from or who was the first one to say whatever.
Now it seems like hip hop belongs to the people you see in the videos and radios. So I want to give it bring it back to the hood, make a statement for NY to put us back in our proper perspective, and of course let them know that Ra still spits fire.
Everything derives from the mind. From sex to the way you want people to perceive you to anything in life, it all derives from the mind. If people start realizing this and get deeper into themselves they'll realize there's nothing that they can't do.
The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious... There was an integrity that people respected.
When I started rhyming, my favorite rhythms were from John Coltrane and some of the things he did on sax. And certain rhythms that I hear on drums, I try to emulate with my words, dropping on the same patterns that them beats or them notes would hit.
When you listen to old-school music, you can smell your mother's food in the kitchen. You can feel where you was when you first heard that song. That's what's beautiful about music. It's for everyone, but we all have individual memories that make us love it.
Back in the day, music imitated life. Now it's the opposite way around: life is imitating music. It's like whatever the rappers say, people think that that's how we're supposed to be; but back then, we kind of looked at the streets, and we made music for that.
I don't accept that the new generation is looking for anything different than what we've always been looking for. Depending on the moment, they want bangers that make them crack their neck, they want tracks that put them in a zone where they can sit back and chill.
Maino is an artist that I feel walks what he talks - you can tell what he raps about and what he's been through is very similar. You've got a lot of rappers that rap about what they've heard or seen, but I think Maino is one of the rappers that has actually lived it.
You know, I got kids. I got sons, and I try to tell them, 'Look, man, when you in the car and you get pulled over, hands on the steering wheel. 'Yes, sir. No sir.' Your job is to either wind up in jail, so I can come get you, or be able to pull off. That's your job.'