As a conscious rap artist, you should not want to be in a gangster market. You should be trying to establish your own market, create a place where you can be yourself and make some money and feed your family.
I'm the young city bandit, hold myself down singlehanded For murder raps, I kick my thoughts alone, get remanded Born alone, die alone, no crew to keep my crown or throne I'm deep by sound alone, caved inside in a thousand miles from home
Rap is poetry to music, like beatniks without beards and bongos.
And when I smiled, 'Bing!' I almost blinded her. She said, 'Great Scot, are you a thief? Seems like you have a mouth full of gold teeth!' Hahahaha, had to find that funny, So I said, 'No child, I work hard for the money. And calling me a thief? Please. . . don't even try it, Sit down, eat your slice of pizza, and be quiet. '
The power of the voice in rap is about the expression of truth, rather than the expression of some kind of artifice. Landays, they're about love and pleasure and oppression and levels of oppression within a family. And because of that, I think rap music is probably closely related.
I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, but I made a rap song 20 years ago with Afrika Bambaataa.
Everyone who raps isn't hip-hop. To be hip-hop, you've got to know the culture. You got to know the history.
I like to make music, I like rap music. Even if I'm white, I support that music. If I want to support it or any other white kid wants to support it more power to them.
They can bite, but cannot be us, They can come and pick up little slang but cannot see us, You ought to be ashamed trying to fit in my adidas, So Run like DMC like you don't know you got no heater
Y'all get crimey crimey, grimy grimy. But those with a tiny hiney thay get whiny whiny
I think unscripted variety television may or may not get a bad rap now, but it is a fabulous environment. It is exactly who I am, and there's so much creativity there to express.
We ain't speak, clicking heat is our Morse code.
Bass! How low can you go? Death row. . . what a brother know. Once again, back is the incredible, The rhyme animal, the uncannable "D!" Public Enemy Number One. Five-O said, "Freeze!" and I got numb. Can I tell 'em that I really never had a gun? But it's the wax that the Terminator X spun.
A simple right or left can mean life or death, Epic fail or nice success, Days of pleasure or nights of stress.
Lenny Bruce genius was the unique ability to investigate hypocrisy and expose social inequities in a street rap that was really a form of poetry.
Let's test the waters. . . Love makes a splash, and you too thick to skinny-dip.
Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.
I'm not rapping, I'm conversing. It's just a conversation between me and you.
Make the money, don't let the money make you Change the game, don't let the game change you
We come from the days when rap used to agitate the mainstream. Now it's more buddy-buddy. That doesn't sit well with me. So what we need is [a bit more] street politics, bringing up issues, agitating you a little bit. And nothing can agitate you more now than a terrorist threat.