Hip Song Quotes & Sayings

It's basically me saying to the industry that I won't work within the walls in hip-hop. I want to put a twist on things, and that's what that song is all about. It's about putting a twist on stereotypes. — SonReal

When I am performing live, I walk into a room, and I just try to get a feel for the vibe, and I am coming from different angles musically. I might come with a new song, I might come with some hip-hop, with some R&B. Once I find my way, then I am hitting you, and hitting you all night. — Grandmaster Flash

In hip-hop, I wasn't very focused on delivering a message. It was just a string of lines that didn't connect. What I wanted to do is write stories ... and affect someone's emotions with that song. I think as a soul singer, I'm able to accomplish that. — Aloe Blacc

I think hip-hop is no more misogynistic than America is as a society. I just think hip-hop is a lot more brash, a lot more bold, a lot more loquacious. There are a lot more words that go into a hip-hop song than go into a regular song. — Talib Kweli

With rock music, it usually revolves around the band. You go in as a band and probably take about a year to record an album. But for a hip-hop song, you can create a track and an idea with verses and choruses in a day, and get three different people on it. It seems like you're able to do more with hip-hop. — Travis Barker

I've been writing songs and making music since I was probably ten years old ... so my inspirations back then, I don't know - I guess it was something that was innate. I was really shaped to make hip-hop music and love hip hop. — Hoodie Allen

Like the song "Stereo", to me that's like, kind of hip-hop in that slacker way. There's some slackerisms mixed in with that stuff, but it wasn't really conscious, I guess. When things would get more typical rock'n'roll that was my fallback to go to those kind of lyrics instead of the alternatives. — Stephen Malkmus

In hip hop, it's a lot more about lacing a hot track. I start it, I help mix it, I help write it, I help produce it, I cut the person's vocals. I'm involved from the beginning to the end of a song. I'm not just giving someone a beat, you know? — Benny Blanco

The song, 'Life is Better,' is about hip-hop. It's about my love for hip-hop. And, you know, I go through all the artists from the beginning to the end, you know. And, well, not to the end, but since the beginning to now, you know. — Q-Tip

I wouldn't go so far as to make 'You Don't Own Me' a tango or 'It's My Party' a hip-hop thing. Believe me, those things have been suggested to me. But I thought if I could stay true to the song, the arrangements would work. I'm really enjoying singing them. — Lesley Gore

I feel like a lot of people in the hip hop world don't take me seriously as a rapper, and I feel that first-and-foremost I came up as a rapper before I started singing. All a lot of people know from me is 'Cupid's Chokehold,' and they don't scratch the surface and see beyond that dude who sings the song about his girlfriend. — Travie McCoy

I've been writing songs since I was 10 years old and always had a penchant for rhyming. I started listening to hip hop through my friends and fell in love with it. — Hoodie Allen

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

Music just ain't what it used to;
We used to have songs that you could shoplift or boost to. — Jadakiss

My goal in this music business is to be here as long as I'm alive. I want my music to be here. I want to be the Michael Jackson and the Prince of hip-hop. I want to be a legend. I want to change the world. I want to give them songs that mean something. — Petey Pablo

There needs to be structures in place to do something about misrepresentation about hip hop. When awards are given out and the media talk about hip hop, they're confused because they haven't done their homework on it so you have a case where there's an award for the most pop song in the world and it's called 'hip hop'. — Nas

I'm someone that examines culture and tries to break down why things are the way that they are whether its hip-hop music, sex, race, or consumerism. I try to examine it and scrutinize it to the point where I can write a song. — Macklemore

McDonald's offers a king's ransom to any hip-hop artist who is able to put Big Mac into a song. MTV - and more to the point, Viacom - is succeeding in extending a teenage life to twenty-nine or even thirty-one years old. It is about extending this market and removing any intelligent substance in the music. — Chuck D

Whitney Houston, one of my biggest inspirations, also had that same mindset because her songs vary from R&B, hip hop, pop, and gospel. — Heather Headley

In the early '80s, I was blown away when I began to hear some of the earliest hip-hop songs, and I'm fascinated by all the permutations the genre has gone through. — Simon De Pury

So few hip-hop artists have ever advanced. Their songs on their seventh, eighth albums sound exactly like the songs on their first album. More than an artist, I'm a real person-and real people grow. And I wanna just sing my growth. — Kanye West

I'm not stuck strictly doing hip-hop. Songs from the dance/electronic scene are my favorite to make and remix, and I like that world. — AraabMuzik

I CAN MAKE YOUR PUSSY WHISTLE LIKE THE ANDY GRIFFITH THEME SONG. — Drake

'Nothin' on You' by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I'd been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing. — Bruno Mars

Every time I want to impress someone about samples and hip-hop, I play 'Portrait of Tracy.' It's one of the greatest bass players ever doing a whole composition with only the two harmonics of electric bass; then a three-second loop in it became every great R&B song in five-year intervals. — Diplo

I was drawn to love songs, but I was just drawn to great music - no matter if it's hip-hop, pop, R&B or whether it's rock n' roll or country. It could be a Garth Brooks song, and if it's a smash, then I'll love the different wordplay and different melodies. That's what I'm a fan of - great music. — Nayvadius Cash

None of my songs sound the same. None of them. I take R&B beats and put it as a rap song or hip-hop beats and put them as a R&B song. A lot of people are boring. I don't like boring music. Everybody sounds the same, like they copying. — Shy Glizzy

I promise I'll never tell."
"Don't promise that," he said in an ultraserious voice. "If they try to hurt you and the only way to protect yourself is to tell them what you know about me, then you tell them. Straight off, okay?"
"No."
"Promise me."
"No!"
"I will possess your heart."
Heat flared along the back of my neck. "What did you say?"
"My favorite song. 'I Will Possess Your Heart.'"
"By Death Cab for Cutie?"
He snorted. "No, the little known T.I. Hip-hop remix. Yes, Death Cab for Cutie."
... "Why? What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing, but it doesn't seem to fit you. It's kind of a sad song."
"No it's pure confident. It's not 'I want' or 'I need', none of that crap." He slipped his hand over mine. "It's 'I will.'"
A nervous laugh bubbled up. "You will, huh?"
His fingers brushed my cheek, then slid into my hair. "I will. — Jeri Smith-Ready

Legions of young hip-hop fans are as against this as hip-hop's most fierce critics. There is a huge underground movement within hip-hop circles that against these representation. You can hear this message on tons of lyrics and rap songs produced by independent emcees. But they are fighting against a well-oiled and well-financed machine. — Bakari Kitwana

I have always been involved with radio, whether it was as an artist talking to radio about my own songs, or as a promotion man at Def Jam to working records through my company. In 2000 I was asked to host a show in Norfolk VA and through that show I was then asked to host the morning show in Detroit. The concept of the show was around Hip Hop. We were active in the community and we wanted to do a local show that had a hip hop feel around it. — MC Serch

Morrissey wrote a really gorgeous song for me. I'm crazy for that man. And he thinks I'm hip! — Nancy Sinatra

I played a little bit of everything. I got Ace of Bass, hip-hop songs, and dance hall [music]. — Theophilus London

Hip-hop is more than music, it's a culture. It's bigger than hit songs. — Nelly

Coming from a little suburban town, I wasn't a hip city kid. I was quite the opposite, really. Songs like 'Saturday's Kids' rang a bell for kids all over the country. That song was about the kids I grew up with. — Paul Weller

I basically try not to waste any lines in any of my songs, and I think the witty phrases and funny lyrics I have bring a smarter sound to college hip-hop. — Mike Stud

That's one of my struggles as a hip-hop artist. If I feel like doing a super conscious song where I don't even rap. — SonReal

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. — Nelly Furtado

Your best work involves timing. If someone wrote the best hip hop song of all time in the Middle Ages, he had bad timing. — Scott Adams

I'm surprised that the next speaker is Boggs, who I think of as a muscular robot that does Coin's bidding. "When she sang the song. While the little girl died." Somewhere in my head an image surfaces of Boggs with a young boy perched up on his hip. In the dining hall, I think. Maybe he's not a robot after all. — Suzanne Collins

My opinion is that music is music. As long as you approach doing a remix with truth, I don't see the dance remixes being any different than an hip-hop remix- it's really a different version of the song. — Deborah Cox

I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. I have a song about that. And why wouldn't you? It strikes me that that was a huge event. It's kind of funny and horrible and interesting, so why wouldn't one write about that? — Loudon Wainwright III

We play a hip-hop song and suddenly 25 people on the left jump up and put their hands in the air; then you play Lost Cause and they're like, I don't know about this one. — Beck

I wrote my first song, 'Conversion', to this little hip-hop instrumental. I went to an open-mic, plugged my iPod into the P.A., and sang over the beat. — Leon Bridges

I despise hip hop. Loathe it. Eminem is an idiot and I find 50 Cent the most distasteful character I have ever crossed in my life. Eminem's new song about his kid - isn't it the most ridiculous piece of music you have ever heard in your life? I just don't like the dragging women around on dog leads and all that stuff — Noel Gallagher

I grew up in New York City in the '80s, and it was the epicenter of hip-hop. There was no Internet. Cable television wasn't as broad. I would listen to the radio, hear cars pass by playing a song, or tape songs off of the radio. At that time, there was such an excitement around hip-hop music. — Michael Rapaport

I am so all over the place with my music taste, it's ridiculous. It is! I mean, I find myself listening to weird things like hardcore techno music and then I'll be listening to mainstream hip-hop music. But it's like I am so crazy with my music taste. I'll listen to a song, I'll become obsessed with it, and then I'm on to the next one. So it's just very inconsistent. — Taylor Lautner

I think 'Country Girl' is one song that can veer into country or hip-hop or rap. You can listen to it and enjoy the humor and the fun in it. — Luke Bryan

I heard Q-Tip on the Jungle Brothers' song 'The Promo.' It was very exciting. It was very new. The music and the culture around hip-hop was evolving. I think there's an emotional quality to their music and there's a vulnerability to the music. For me, A Tribe Called Quest was my Beatles. — Michael Rapaport

And finally, I just felt it was crucial for some of us in the hip hop community to speak up on the issues of teen suicide, bullying, and the overall anti-homosexual sentiment that exist within hip hop culture. I felt so strongly about these issues and this song that I had to do a video that would command some attention, even if it makes some viewers uncomfortable. Even if it came at the cost of my own comfort. — MURS

The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with. — Talib Kweli

I don't understand why people make me want to make music that's a join-the-dots thing by numbers. I find it really difficult when people say, 'Aw, you should have made a really big hip hop record, that would have been really good for you' or, 'You should have made a song like Lily Allen, that would have been so great.' — M.I.A.

I hate how all the hip hop bands of today will put crazy sound effects into their songs. You know what I mean, like a police or ambulance siren in a tune? Because I could own the CD, I could listen to it 50 gamillion times in my car - I still fall for it every time. — Doug Benson

Barriers have been broken: rappers are singing, and singers are rapping. You might catch a rapper on a rock song, a pop artist on a hip-hop song - there are so many different things that are going on today. That is the same way in which we live our lives; we're all over the place. I like to try different things. — Trey Songz