Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm like an eclipse on a Friday the 13th, With black cats and Haley's Comet, Blazin' blunts in my driveway.
I like that the hard-core ruffians, the street thugs come up to me and say, 'Man, you killed it with Adele.'
Philly DJs sort of always won battles and always won awards and stuff like that and were always super sharp.
We are true to our name. We're somewhat beneath the surface, and I think well always be to a certain extent.
The 'Red and Meth' show was good, but it wasn't good to me. I just looked at it as an experience and a check.
Success happened real quick, so I was just all over the place and damn near lost my mind on the second album.
You can only be the great artist for so long - come out with effort after effort that garners all this praise.
I made the mistake of going to a barber who was not from Philly, and let's just say, I would never do that again.
It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders the day I finally finished both verses for 'My Shot.'
I never looked out for MTV... I just looked for the approval of the streets... The streets will always let you know.
Now when I first heard EPMD's first joint 'You Gots to Chill' and later 'So Whatcha Sayin'?' I said, 'I can do this!'
It doesn't phaze, I amaze wit my phrases Play this in your Jeep, so your neighbors lose some sleep (I wanna thank you)
We know Uncle George directly, so he gives us music to sample, all we gotta do is tell him directly and we can use it.
Negativity lives in rap. That's what it's built on. That's where the money circulates and generates from - negativity.
My superheroes are Meth, Keith Murray, Busta Rhymes, ODB, Xzibit. The superheroes before us were EPMD, Slick Rick, Rakim.
Of course I'm funky like fat people having intercourse. Basically, the funk is stuck in your teeth...so get the dental floss.
The business aspect is more controlled than the culture, which allowed MCs to come in and talk about things like cars and jewels.
I just use every experience I go through as a learning experience so I can better myself and get in position on what I want to do.
The whole 'Muddy Waters' title is not about things look or how deep it can get or it can be. It's just the slouchiness of the album.
To me I think leadership is activism. It's giving back to your community, it's investing in oneself, and you know women and children.
You can't expect every idea of yours to stick or even come to fruition, you have to make sacrifices for the greater good of the team.
At this point, in 2008, if you put out a book, a movie, or write a verse, paint a painting, it should have some sort of social value.
I'll read a book. I'll watch a documentary or a film or whatever. I'll go to an art exhibit and just try and open myself to influence.
We don't try to please everyone. Those older fans who expect something from The Roots are a tad more important to me than getting new fans.
Commercial success won't come to us from a change in the music. It will gradually be the result of a change in the appetite of the audience.
I am a Wu-Tang member and Method Man, he been a Def Squad member way before I was a Wu member. I was like a Wu member but I wasn't official.
You know what make me laugh? Good, clean, honest humor. Not-trying-to-be-funny humor. Like Will Ferrell. Will Ferrell got that kind of humor.
I've become a functioning cog in the machine called The Roots, but in my youth I was comin' from a more braggadocious, egotistical perspective.
I'm in great company and some may say that the underexposure has added to my allure and the staying power of me as a MC and The Roots as a band.
You know, if an actor or, say, a basketball player writes a rhyme, it doesn't mean he's a rapper. You got to put in time. I don't say I'm an actor.
The first 'Blackout!' just started out with us doing the first song, 'How High' - I guess it was 'How High' - and then it just took off from there.
If a hip-hop artist can get on stage and entertain an arena full of 30,000 people and keep their attention for 45 minutes, imagine that on a big screen.
I'm not trying to top the 'Muddy Waters' album. What I'm doing by naming it 'Muddy Waters 2' is to let you relive that '90s kind of sound and experience.
It's weird what can trigger the beginning of a song or some bars. It can be a banging slice of apple pie or it can be smelling a certain perfume or something.
Every artist can actually say that, that the overseas community appreciates the culture of hip-hop more, really, rather than over here. So it's fun to perform there.
Although there are people who regard 'Do You Want More?!!!??!' as our first major release, I think 'Things Fall Apart' was the real arrival of The Roots, so to speak.
We always do kinda like the bare bones representation or variation of the voice and drums, which is what we feel is the foundation or backbone of rapping and hip hop.
There probably won't be an animated The Roots or Black Thought as there was, say, an animated Michael Jackson when 'The Jackson 5' cartoon show was on when we were kids.
I feel like the youthful experience is what drives the creativity, and I feel like experience and maturity as an adult, experience as an elder statesman, that refines it.
I feel like Black Thought is a name that has so much meaning and depth, not only to me but to my fans, that it's something that I wanted to hold onto a little bit tighter.
We record in the spirit of the Berry Gordy camp and Gamble & Huff, where people were writing up to a dozen quality songs within a day because the competition was that hard.
I work well within The Roots because I can let my music speak for itself while Ahmir does most of the press and the promotion and the brand-building because he enjoys that.
I feel like I've been around for such a long time, as a writer and as an artist, that I need to sort of speak to the way that my perception of the world has sort of changed.
Everything we've ever done has been for artistry's sake, and for the greater good and paying homage to those who came before us and paving the way for those who come after us.
As we get further into our career we're figuring out how to become more efficient as artists, and doing so many different things is testament to our cohesiveness as the Roots.
Lots of people are saying that I shut down mumble rap in one 10-minute setting. But that wasn't my intention, because mumble rap - if we go back - that's something I invented.
I want to be behind the scenes, and learn more. What cameras to use, what lenses to use, what shots I want to get. And it takes time, so being on movies and sets, I just learn.
I remember when I was 15 or 16 years old, I couldn't imagine what life would be like past the age of 30, just because I didn't know that many men who had lived beyond their 20s.
The Tonight Show' afforded us the opportunity to work with The Muppets and other 'Sesame Street' characters, and we always had the desire to do something that spoke to young people.
I feel like visual art, the culinary arts, the theatrical arts - the medium changes, the tools that you use to tell whatever the story changes, but you're still all telling stories.