Hip Hop Music

"Never looking back, or too far in front of me. The present is a gift, and I just wanna be."

"We got arms but wont reach for the skies"

"Be the author of your own horoscope"

"We write songs about wrong cause its hard to see right"

"I look into my daughter's eyes. And realize that I'ma learn through her. The Messiah, might even return through her. If I'ma do it, I gotta change the world through her"

"Yo...on the amen, corner I stood lookin' at my former hood Felt the spirit in the wind, knew my friend was gone for good Threw dirt on the casket, the hurt, I couldn't mask it Mixin down emotions, struggle I hadn't mastered I choreographed seven steps to heaven and hell, waiting to exhale and make the bread leavened Veteran of a cold war its Chica-i-go for What I know or, whats known"

"Tried to call, or at least beep the lord, but didn't have a touch-tone"

"Let the truth be told from young souls that become old From days spent in the jungle, where must one go To find it, time is real, we can't rewind it Out of everybody I met, who told the truth? Time did"

"Took a picture of the truth and tried to develop it Had proof, but it was only recognized by the intelligent Took the negative and positive, cause niggas got to live Said I got to get more than I'm given Cause truth'll never be heard in religion After searching the world, on the inside what was hidden?It was the truth"

"This is street rad-i-o, For unsung hero, Driving in the regal, trying to stay legal, My daughter found Nemo, I found the new primo, Yeah, you know how we do, we do it for the people.""

"I think and speak clearer since I cut the dairy out. I can breathe better and perform at a better rate, and my voice is clearer. I can explore different things with my voice that I couldn’t do because of my meat and dairy ingestion. I am proud and blessed to be a vegetarian, everything became clear."

"I went to the movies — it was Kanye, myself and John Mayer, and we went to see "Ray." We were watching it, and I was just inspired by the movie, just as a musician and as an artist, I felt inspired. We left there and went straight to the studio. Kanye started cooking up this beat and started doing this chant, like, "Go, go, go," and while we were sitting there thinking what to write, John Mayer said, "You could write about your fantasy." And I was like, "Am I going to let John Mayer come up with the concept for this joint? This is hip-hop." But John Mayer is a very talented brother and you don't know where your blessings are going to come from. He was singing, and we made him a sample on it, going 'Go.' So it all came together and now we have the song 'Go!,' which is about going to my fantasy."

"Recently, John and I got to go to Selma and perform “Glory” on the same bridge that Dr. King and the people of the civil rights movement marched on 50 years ago. This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation, but now is a symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and social status. The spirit of this bridge connects the kid from the South Side of Chicago, dreaming of a better life, to those in France standing up for their freedom of expression, to the people in Hong Kong protesting for democracy. This bridge was built on hope, welded with compassion, and elevated by love for all human beings."

"So if I act like a pimp ain't nothin to it gangsta rap made me do it If I call you a nappy headed ho ain't nothin to it gangsta rap made me do it If I shoot up your college ain't nothin to it gangsta rap made me do it If I rob you of knowledge ain't nothin to it gangsta rap made me do it"

"But as with yesterday's comic books, the fact that future generations will snicker at gangsta rap's glorification of violence and over-the-top misogyny doesn't mean that Bill Cosby is wrong to deplore it today - and the fact Americans seem to cope with the steady coarsening of our popular culture by becoming steadily more jaded about just about everything ought to be cause for concern, rather than complacency."

"The only trend I do not like in rap right now is the message rap. I consider the message rap the equivalent of what strings were to rock 'n' roll in the late '50s - a capitulation to the adult norm who can't accept the music on its own terms. The people who considered "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Annie Had a Baby" - as the pinnacles of '50s R&B now are super uptight over the - in quotes - hotel/motel lyrics of rap. Rap is definitely as true to the essence of rock 'n roll as anything that's out there today."

"[T]he hip hop nation is wonderful. Surely there are those who would demonize this group of young people, but they are only doing what our ancestors have always done: used what they have to get where they need to go."

"The history of conscious hip-hop is interesting. The best MCs in the world have always — when I first came in the business — always needed to have something conscious, something dealing with the community, something uplifting, something positive. Even if the majority of the content was negative, you had to have that. And that changed over time. You had Tupac and Biggie came out, and then you had Jay-Z. And the best rapper became about who was the tough guy, you know? Who's busting they gun off or something like that. And now you have Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Wale, J. Cole. They're talking a lot about partying; you know, sex, having fun. And those are the guys who are considered the best. People consider conscious rap now, in hip-hop circles, to feel condescending or feel like not a part of the mainstream. So the challenge for me is, "How do I be as good or better than these rappers out here?" and "How do I stay relevant with my music still being considered conscious?""

"These artists talk about 'ho this, bitch this, skank this' and all the other stuff. They're talking about all our mothers, all our sisters. They're talking about their own mothers, grandmothers. You have to have knowledge of self and knowledge of history. Because if you had that you would not use that terminology. You would not even be in that mindset. And we're in a time when young black boys and girls want to be pimps and strippers, because that is what they see. . . . Something is definitely wrong."

"Young black kids didn't grow up wanting to be a pimp or a stripper like they do now. You might think I'm making generalizations, but I don't think I am. That's how serious this stuff is. When I was young, cats going to college got as much (love) as the ones who could rap or play ball."

"Huey: Who cares about what Hip-Hop is supposed to be? I’m talking about what it is. Most of rap music is violent and stupid, and that ain’t the media’s fault!"

"Huey: Look, rap, for the most part, has been stuck in the “Gangsta Rap” era for over ten years now – mostly because it sells so well to white kids. But rap doesn’t clearly draw the line between fact and fiction. The whole point seems to be to make people believe that made-up gangster tales are true."

"New music is often popular for the very fact that earlier generations find it shocking; this was "our" music, misunderstood by others. What most people heard was just a loud of shouting and swearing; they thought the music appealed because of its shock value. They couldn't have been more wrong. These rappers were bright, street smart, and articulate. Their rhymes encapsulated the experiences of being young, male, and black in a way that simply didn't exist elsewhere in the media. This was a time when banana skins were still being thrown at black players at football matches, when Nelson Mandela was still in prison, and when the beating of Rodney King by the LAPD was about to send shockwaves around the world. The sense of disenfranchisement, that you couldn't rely on the state for help, was very real."

"The potential for [rappers] to deliver a message of extraordinary power, that gets people thinking [is there]. The thing about hip-hop today is it's smart, it's insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable."

"This is hip hop. Hands up, if you're forever a fan of hip hop. I wake up hip hop, go to sleep hip hop. Dream about hip hop, because I am hip hop."

"Please, please don't call rap music; it's and some of it's groovy. But if you can't hum it, it's not music."

"Many black rappers--including Ice-T and Sister Souljah--contend that they are being unfairly singled out because their music reflects deep changes in society not being addressed anywhere else in the public forum. The white politicians, the artists complain, neither understand the music nor desire to hear what's going on in the devastated communities that gave birth to the art form."

"Rap — so many words, so little said. What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there. All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it and they're happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can't tell one note from another."

"Because most rappers started out with a DJ playing records for musical accompaniment (no live musicians), many rap records are based around the chords and bass lines of popular songs."

"Hip-hop is a rejection of a lot of the tropes of traditional musicianship."

"What people don't understand about rap, is that it brings back old music from every walk of life: R&B, country, you name it. If it was good music back in the old days, we bring it back. A lot of the tunes that get sampled are songs that nobody remembers any more. Rap music is like bringing to life the music of people who were dead. It's a resurrection style of music."

"Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock."

"I think it’s unconstitutional when art is used against an artist to implicate them in a crime. The First Amendment provides that people have free expression, and I think with Black men the lens — we’re evaluated almost exclusively through a criminal lens. And so what would be art in the eyes of, or at the creation of, one person becomes a crime when it’s created by a young Black man. Again, it’s good that the judges pushed back against those attacks on 2Pac’s artistry and his constitutional right, but we’ve seen that since that time, prosecutors have continued to use rap lyrics to try to chill free expression."

"[H]urtful, offensive and wrong. They perpetuate stereotypes that have been the basis for discrimination and violence against Jews for thousands of years. Words like this tear at the fabric of the Black-Jewish relationship. The Black and Jewish communities must stand together through incidents like this to make clear that trafficking in hateful stereotypes is unacceptable — and that the words of one entertainer do not reflect the views of an entire community."

"This is classic anti-Semitism. There it goes again, the age-old canard that Jews are all-powerful and control the levers of power in government. As a celebrity with a wide following, Kanye West should know better. We hope that he will take responsibility for his words, understand why they are so offensive, and apologize to those he has offended."

"During Kanye West’s spectacular plummet last fall, my friends and I would often marvel at the latest outrageous thing he’d said. And we would send around clips of what were, in hindsight, terribly suspect comments he’d previously made. One such example was “I am not a fan of books,” which Ye told an interviewer upon the publication of his own book, Thank You and You’re Welcome. “I am a proud non-reader of books,” he continued. That statement strikes me as one of the more disturbing things he’s ever said. Ye’s patently reprehensible anti-Semitic tirades rightly drew the world’s scorn. But his anti-book stance is disturbing because it says something about not only Ye’s character but the smugly solipsistic tenor of this cultural moment. We have never before had access to so many perspectives, ideas, and information. Much of it is fleetingly interesting but ultimately inconsequential—not to be confused with expertise, let alone wisdom. This much is widely understood and discussed. The ease with which we can know things and communicate them to one another, as well as launder success in one realm into pseudo-authority in countless others, has combined with a traditional American tendency toward anti-intellectualism and celebrity worship. Toss in a decades-long decline in the humanities, and we get our superficial culture in which even the elite will openly disparage as pointless our main repositories for the very best that has been thought."

"Kanye threatened the Jews yesterday on twitter and it’s not even trending. Why do mostly only Jews speak up against Jewish hate? The silence is so loud"

"We can't stop a deranged bigot from spewing hate filled, ignorant bile ... but we CAN stop giving him a megaphone, Mr. Musk. Kanye West has 32.7 million followers on your platform, X. That's twice as many people than the number of Jews in existence. His sick hate speech results in REAL LIFE violence against Jews. I don't know what's worse, the fact that he identifies as a Nazi (which implies he wants to exterminate ALL marginalized communities including his own) or the fact that there is not sufficient OUTRAGE to remove and ban him from all social media at this point. Silence is complicity."

"@KanyeWest asked permission to sample a section of a 1983 live performance of “Iron Man” from the US Festival without vocals and was refused permission because he is an antisemite and has caused untold heartache to many. He went ahead and used the sample anyway at his album listening party last night. I want no association with this man!"

"I like Kanye, He's a Chicago guy. Smart. He's very talented. He is a jackass, but he's talented."

"He's a jackass."

"I've met with Kanye [...] The thing about hip-hop today is it's smart, it's insightful, and the way that [West] can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable."

"The one thing I fear for [West] the most is if you keep talking about being the greatest, people eventually are going to want to watch you fail. Those who crash and burn are far more interesting to watch than those who actually succeed."

"With Kanye, the arrogant thing always comes up, but think about what that does for your ability to make art. He doesn't even question himself as to whether he can do it or not. He does it fast and good, and he doesn't stop on the side of the road to wonder if he can do it."

"He is opening Donda Academy, a vocational school in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, and plans to build a series of shelters — which he calls “Dondasteries” — to provide safe spaces for those in need."

"The holiest day in Judaism was last week. Words matter. A threat to Jewish people ended once in a genocide. Your words hurt and incite violence [...] You are a father. Please stop."

"After further reflection I've come to the realization that I'm not a Nazi"

"Adam Sandler Thank you for the love"

"call me Yaydolf Yitler"

"Hitler was sooooo fresh"