I put the truth out there, I put the historical facts into Hip Hop to show us how much history repeats itself and that if we truly want to evolve as a human race, we need to stop sticking each other in ridiculous categories.
It's like a paradox. For one side, being popularized rap got better and the other side of it got worse. It's very pop and it's very different now. When you make it as pop and as soft as it is, it lacks its integrity. It lacks its accountability. It lacks a lot of other things that came from that dangerous time in hip hop.
I'm a fan of hip hop music, so I always used a hip hop element in my music anyway.
We wound up taking my enterprise inside marketing, branding, management, finances. We went in there [Sisterhood of Hip Hop show] and taught them a little bit about everything in hopes of them being able to have some takeaways that they'd be able to use in the future for their own careers. And I think we were pretty successful.
One of the problems with hip hop is lack of infrastructure and not being able to control its own course. I don't like that hip hop is full of infantile 35-year-olds. Hip hop cannot afford to be lazy.
You are not doing hip hop; you ARE hip hop.
Hip hop is the new rock n' roll, you know what I mean? And anybody who doesn't think that is just sort of living in the past. It's all just American music, really, when you get right down to it.
The courage to be yourself is the essence of hip hop
I think hip hop allows us to talk about everything, and Africa is what I choose to talk about now. If people are not talking about Africa, that's them, that's cool, there's nothing wrong with that. But this is who I am, this is what I have to say, this is what I have to offer.
If you asked me what pop is right now. I'd say hip hop.
If Hip Hop has the ability to corrupt young minds, it also has the ability to Uplift them.
I write pop songs. But I think it is sprinkled with a lot of counter-culture references. It ranged from rap to hip hop to trip hop, house, drum and bass, and experimental and improv and jazz.
I don’t think that early hip hop stood out to be a social critique. A lot of fans of mine think that hip hop’s ultimate responsibility is to critique social structures.
Rap is something you do Hip Hop is something you live
Kangoroos can't hop backwards.
Don't be impatient with me. Bear in mind that I hop around among all of you big beasts like a harmless and helpless frog who is afraid of being squashed.
The 'king of hip hop' is always the poster child for capitalism, no matter who it is.
Hip hop culture has done more for race relations in American than anything since Martin Luther King. And I really believe that.
When I die, so does hip hop.
It's not about what you get out but what you put into hip hop as a genre.