Hip Hop Quotes

Hip-hop, this thing we love that loves us back, is our lingua franca.

This guy! I plead the fifth. This guy is nuts.”- Eminem“Dope questions, man. Very insightful, very thoughtful.”- Guru (Gang Starr)“You like a Psychiatrist or some shit? This shit is just coming out but go ahead.”- Mary J. Blige“Definitely a real interview! Digging deep up in there, man. Not afraid to ask questions!”- K-Ci Hailey (Jodeci)“The Wizard asked me for a copy of your magazine.”- Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (Daft Punk)“You didn’t wear your glasses and you haven’t carried your hearing aid. What else is wrong with you?”- Bushwick Bill“Peace and blessing, Brother Harris. Thank you for inspiring my words. Keep ‘yo balance.”- Erykah Badu“Can I see that pen?”- Bobby Brown“What else do you want to know? Talk to me.”- Aaliyah

Some men are born to be good some born to be badAs for me I only came with just a pen ‘n’ a pad.

I know one thing for sho Heaven’s gotta have a ghettoCuz where else in death do I get to go?

This one is for our crew, but it’s also for all the weird girls and word nerds, for all the in-the-middle wickeds and queers and misfits and hell-raisers.

Science n’ Shit in a Hip-Hop Style with Stephen Hawking(Kick-snare, kick-kick snare).‘Let me tell you my plan for the human race, well I would but I can’t,‘Cos I can’t move me face,So my computerised voice is how I’ll go, I type with me eye to keep the flowWe’re all gonna go live in outer spaceWhere zero gravity will stop me dribbling all over the placeI’ll tell y’all how I’ll get there:With some rockets built into me special wheel chairThe moons of Jupiter, in perfect animationWe’ll all live in a huge space stationI’ll be able to dance and chase all the fannyAnd finally get me end away with me nanny.’Science n’ Shit in a Hip-Hop Style with Stephen Hawking II‘From the moons of Ganymede, Io & Titan, I’ll tell y’all somethin’ that’s sure to enlightenIn space, there are galaxies nebula & starsAnd dying suns that are going super no-vaBut no anomalies can compare, To how much I wanna run my fingers through your hairSir Patrick Moore, a true space oracle, With your knowledge of cheats and gorgeous monocleI’m coming out as gay, and I don’t give a hootI’m the first fuckin’ vegetable that turned into a fruitWord.

As with outlaw figures, in diverse musical and oral cultures throughout the world- Mexican corridos and Egyptian shaabi music, for example- Hip Hop's irreverence toward dominant values and noncompliance with the status quo creates alternative, counterhegemonic spaces.

As social phenomena, languages are tied up in world of unequal power relations, gaining or losing status not based on technical linguistic grounds but on social judgement, biases, and stereotypes that are based on the status of their speakers. As such, we argue that white America's love-hate relationship with black modes of communication can only be interpreted within a framework that considers language a primary site of cultural contestation. It should be clear by now that it's about more than a mothafucka, right? Our analysis of Black Language forms that the dominant culture considers inflammatory, controversial, or stigmatized allows us to make several observations. First, building off what anthropologist and linguist Arthur Spears noted in his discussion of uncensored speech, Black verbal culture, like all cultures is "a complex network of predispositions, values, behaviors, expectations and routines." Language practices, in their varying sociocultural contexts, can only be understood if read within the full range of the community's speech activities, and that requires rigorous ethnographic search and analysis. Second the community's beliefs and ideas about language- it's language ideologies- should be the primary point of departure for investigation and interpretation.

This kid was writing saying that they were breaking down some of the racial lines in their towns and communities, because their break dance crews were mixed race, and they didn’t give a fuck. They didn’t care what the Klu Klux Klan said.”- Michael Holman (screenwriter, Basquiat)from nthWORD Issue #8, coming soon...

Maybe I write because I’ve learned to show certain parts of my heart on the page that I still struggle to capture in speech.

Common

...We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter. We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us. We are determining the future at this very moment. We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone. Our music is our alchemy...

I want to marry his smile, and if his smile is already married to someone else, then I want to marry his eyebrows and eyes. They're remarkable. Nobody's ever made better use of his or her eyes or eyebrows as a rapper than Kurtis Blow.

Cuz even a gangsta rapper can find redemptionFor the sins committed before revelation.

I believe...that to be very poor and very beautiful is most probably a moral failure more than an artistic success. Shakespeare would have done well in any generation because he would have refused to die in a corner; he would have taken the false gods and made them over; he would have taken the current formulae and forced them into something lesser men thought them incapable of. Alive today he would undoubtedly have written and directed motion pictures, plays, and God knows what. Instead of saying, "This medium is not good," he would have used it and made it good. If some people called some his work cheap (which some of it was), he wouldn't have cared a rap, because he would know that without some vulgarity there is no complete man. He would have hated refinement, as such, because it is always a withdrawal, and he was too tough to shrink from anything.

Raymond Chandler

Hip-hop is storytelling.

When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion.

What if there were health food stores on every corner in the hood, instead of liquor stores!?

You can be the ugliest man in the world but once you got money, you can have all the women in the world.

Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Rap in its form is poetry, meaning the point of convergence is words.

Rap is supposed to motivate, humours, address societal issues & personal feelings, and also liberate me through art, not insult our women.

Whether we consider hip-hop as an evolved manifestation of the Harlem Renaissance or something completely new under the sun, it clearly has moved beyond the stage of just entertaining lives to that of informing and empowering lives.

Aberjhani

Life is too short for shitty sex and bad relationships. So go find someone who fucks you right and treats you how you deserve to be treated.

Genereux Philip

If thousands of Marathi people follow me that means they want revolution on Marathi land.

Kjiva

In those years, hip-hop saved my life. I was still half alien to the people around me. I loved them, mostly because I'd realized that there was no other choice. Hip-hop gave me a common language, but that August, on liberated land, I found that there were other ways of speaking, a mother tongue that, no matter age, no matter interest, lived in us all.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

When i look to my past i'm not believe in god but for future god is hope.

Kjiva

I'm trap in marriage with gangsta rhyme and my street life.

Kjiva

My inspiration for writing music is like Don McLean did when he did "American Pie" or "Vincent". Lorraine Hansberry with "A Raisin in the Sun". Like Shakespeare when he does his thing, like deep stories, raw human needs.I'm trying to think of a good analogy. It's like, you've got the Vietnam War, and because you had reporters showing us pictures of the war at home, that's what made the war end, or that shit would have lasted longer. If no one knew what was going on we would have thought they were just dying valiantly in some beautiful way. But because we saw the horror, that's what made us stop the war.So I thought, that's what I'm going to do as an artist, as a rapper. I'm gonna show the most graphic details of what I see in my community and hopefully they'll stop it quick.I've seen all of that-- the crack babies, what we had to go through, losing everything, being poor, and getting beat down. All of that. Being the person I am, I said no no no no. I'm changing this.

It’s the lifestyle that’s being packaged and sold rather than the actual meaning.

PEOPLE WITH THE SMARTEST MOUTHSHAVE THE DUMBEST BRAINS

Qwana Reynolds-Frasier

MOST DAYS MY LIFE CAN BE SUMMED UP IN MOVIE QUOTESANDHIP HOP AND R&B LYRICS

Qwana Reynolds-Frasier

A digital sound sample in angry rap doesn't correspond to the graffiti but the wall.

London, London, London town,You can toughen up or get thrown around.

Kano

You could name practically any problem in the hood and there'd be a rap song for you.

Jay-Z

Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music.

Jay-Z

The only reason I am successful is because I have stayed true to myself.

Lindsey Stirling

Only God can judge me so I'm gone, either love me or leave me alone.

Jay-Z

I don't like shit too perfect. I want some human stake in my shit. If it's too perfect I ain't really with it. If it's too clean I ain't really with it. If it's too polished I don't really like it.

Madlib

We'd taken up our positions on the benches between the school hall and a newly-installed outdoor basketball court. Being hip-hoppers, we were obliged to be obsessed with basketball. None of us had a ball.

A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.

Jay-Z

The job of feets is walking, but their hobby is dancing.

PRACTICE MAKES THE HARD THINGS EASY

Qwana Reynolds-Frasier

The human body is the best work of art.

Please, touch me, I pray.