To me, it's an honour to be accepted as a hip hop artist, it gives me a lot of opportunity to express myself.
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.
I'd like to own Intel... I'd like to own Microsoft... I'd love to have Warner Bros in my hip pocket.
I'm a child of the 70's. R&B to me is Curtis Mayfield. Then a transition came in and I was part of the Hip Hop era when Sugar and Kane came out. That was a good transition for me. Then now R&B is Hip Hop and Hip Hop is R&B.
I'm not going to listen to the hottest Hip Hop station in my city because that's not where I'm at right now. I'm going to listen to the smooth jams of the 90's and early 2000's. That's where I am and that's where my audience is.
I do not believe God is responsible for my sins, some people may. But I believe that my own weaknesses are father-filtered and just as much as God touched Jacob's hip and he walked with a limb the rest of his life, that I have certain emotional weaknesses that are there to keep me dependent on God.
Our only teachers and role models for our young men cannot be, you know, videos, and, the hip hop community.
The hip hop community is not at fault here - I'm definitely not blaming them. But, that can't be the only view of manhood for our young men.
People need to understand that hip-hop that has gun talk is just for entertainment; similar to if you were watching a movie.
Allegedly Jesus went through the town and spread the word and the word was God. You know what I mean? And Sean Price... Jesus Price... is going through the hood spreading the word and the word is good hip-hop. That's where it started. There ain't no pictures in there with nails on a cross, I ain't walking no water, I ain't turning water to wine, none of that crazy s**t.
I'm a rapper but I don't f**k with that hip-hop s**t. You understand? I'm home, I take care of my family. I f**k with other kinds of n****s, I don't f**k with no hip-hop dudes, man. That rap s**t is fake... these rap dudes is fake.
The hip-hop that we grew up on is dead to a certain degree. I'm trying to keep it alive though, it's alive in the underground, but don't nobody know about it.
When you go to South Africa, you get a different vibe and a different sound. The music is awesome the people are loving it. When you go to Botswana, it's a different ball game. The people out there love Afro Beat Hip Hop so much. When you go to Sierra Leone it's different, when you go to Nigeria it's different... It's all pretty exciting!
I, like anybody whoever met Eric Wright, was mesmerized & inspired. Eric was more like a big brother to me, to all of us. I always think to myself, if there was no Ruthless, West Coast hip hop would not have been as big.
Hip hop, this is church. Church, this is hip-hop. Y'all need to meet. I know you have some misconceptions about them, I know you have some misconceptions about them. Let's work through this because there's a lot of false perspective.
I want to be the bridge. I embrace it. I don't mind being a leader. I don't mind opening the doors. I guess my prayer is that there will be other leaders behind me who will come in and do more than what I've done, and more than what I can do and that this serves as an opportunity to level the playing field in hip-hop. I just want to be able to say "Hey, there's way more going on in life than the club."
I've always done music to push people to get them to get uncomfortable in their seat so they could wrestle with things. Not to become pew potatoes, just simply sitting there, growing fat with knowledge and not applying it. It's a mixed tape that's really aimed and geared toward hip hop culture.
You have to have a balance, and I think that people get upset about Hip-Hop and say that it's dead because there is no balance. It's just all this simple-minded music, and it doesn't seem to be any content, and the dance club music outnumbers the little content there is.
My love of R&B and hip-hop has influenced my life not even as a musician, but generally in terms of growing up and looking to America as an inspiration.
The hip-hop aesthetic and the way it's produced always motivated me. Alongside that I was still wanting to make great traditional songs because I've never had any desire to rap. My love of hip-hop is driven by my love of rappers, but it was built out of my love of producers.
Hip-hop has been the guiding light of my life as a musician and a music fan. It's the one common thread through all of it from the time I bought my first record probably. It's always been there.
I hope people have pulled something about me and said "Hey Mr. T loves his mother, hey Mr. T ain't no dummy, hey Mr. T never grabbed his crotch," when you're talking about Hip-Hop culture.
I wanna feed 5,000 like Jesus, I wanna build a community center where the homeless and less fortunate can come take a shower, get a hot meal and a change of clothes. Maybe not new clothes but some clean clothes. Those are my goals, my raps and goals haven't changed. I'm about helping somebody, I use my celebrity status for the good of mankind. That's what I do, so for all the Hip-Hop people, if they just pull from me the gold, they're missing so much.
Since I've been in this industry, it's been a constant fight; "Oh, he's white, he's Cuban." "He's tryin' to do hip-hop and he's too Spanish, he's too English."You fight all these stereotypes through all these boundaries, and you find a way to tap-dance through all these different genres and cultures through music - that's what Rebelution is.
I thought that the R&B / Hip-Hop world really hasn't been explored on film and there's some issues that we're going through right now. It's in a very dangerous place , for women especially, both in terms of the songs that men are singing about. You know, R&B used to be a safe place for women and now it just seems like the songs coming out are so angry but also what women have to come out with. You have to get noticed. You see, it's like a script to follow. You come out hyper sexualized but what happens when you can't pull back from that. That's not authentic to yourself.
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