Rap And Poetry Quotes & Sayings

Rap is poetry to music, like beatniks without beards and bongos. — David Lee Roth

I would just say it's not good for the country to have 11 million people here who we don't know who they are, where they're living. They're not paying taxes, but they're showing up in emergency rooms. They're driving up the cost of auto insurance 'cause they don't have driver's licenses and are getting into accidents. They're having children, which are US citizens. So, I mean, it's an issue that needs to be dealt with. — Marco Rubio

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide. — Alain De Botton

That's your problem Sam, you walk around like you're this strong independent woman, but in actuality, you're a scared little girl. And when something frightens you, you run, escape and hide in the closet. — Xyla Turner

While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice. — Andrew Motion

She was pretty, yeah, but pretty like hundreds of other girls. You," he dabbed the bread in the air as if sketching her, "you're ... memorable. Who you are just shines through your face. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

Poetry is not difficult. If you possess one of the five senses, poetry is in it. If you can compose text message, tweet or Facebook status, you can write poetry. If you can rap a song, you can rhyme poetry. If you can memorise a prayer, you can recite poetry. If you struggle to make sense of formatted text, poetry is your call. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous. — Archie Shepp

Sapphic Chords

On what marble stones would you scratch your love today?
Spray it on brick walls, rap it in pool halls,
hang it on the clothes line with you lingerie?
Oh, Sappho!

Would you swing a softball bat, wear lipstick, ride a Harley?
What novels would you pen, what political party?
Is that really tenderness in your final line, or do words hang for what you
couldn't say?

What remnants you left behind, too little but enough
for us to know the luxury of your lust.
Your heat, your wisdom, your passion - all left in fragmented trust.
Oh, Sappho! — Nancy Boutilier

I think rap music is rap music. I mean, are there heavy writing aspects of it? Absolutely. In a sense, is it poetry? Yeah. I've heard that so much, growing up in a house with poetry. But I think people like to use that as a shortcut for who's good and who's not. It's like the word 'lyrical' - 'lyrical' is the worst word in the entire world. — Earl Sweatshirt

Rap is rhythm and poetry. Hip-hop is storytelling and poetry as well. — Ajay Naidu

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

I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important. — John F. Kerry

I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music. — Oscar Hijuelos

That became the signature Ice-T style - rhymes that were "topical" and "vividly optical." To me it was street-level journalism, real-life observations told in poetry. That's the vision I tried to bring to all my recordings. — Ice-T

It just happens to be that people like to associate poetry and rap music. I think that idea is kind of corny. — Earl Sweatshirt

Civilization has taught man how to live in dense crowds, and by that very fact those crowds are likely ultimately to constitute a majority of the world's population. Already there are many who prefer this crowded life, but there are others who do not, and these will gradually be eliminated. Life in the crowded conditions of cities has many unattractive features, but in the long run these may be overcome, not so much by altering them, but simply by changing the human race into liking them. — Charles Galton Darwin

Rap isn't poetry, not least because it involves music and often other elements that aren't words. But the way poets in English use things like rhyme and meter, and the ways these conventions both do and don't apply to rap we try to lay out the rules for rap, in order to understand the techniques that artists like Jay-Z and Kanye employ. — Andrew Hoberek

I felt nothing all the time, and it had started to feel normal. It should have scared me, but it didn't. — Elizabeth Scott

Speaking of people I had to exclude: Hank Williams. which is to say, songs are part of lyric poetry in my book, my thinking. In fact they are the urgent element of poetry in our time, they carry the most emotion for the most people in our culture. everyone LOVES poetry, because we all love (one form or another) of rock and roll (be it folk to emo to rap). It's all rock and roll and all lyric poetry. — Gregory Orr

Having lost religious faith and the humanistic values bound up with it, he [man] concentrated on technical and material values and lost the capacity for deep emotional experiences, for the joy and sadness that accompany them. — Erich Fromm

I mean, there's an aspect I've always said that is - it's, you know, it's not poetry but it's kind of like it. It's not song lyrics but it's kind of like song lyrics. It's not rap but it's kind of like rap. And it's not stand-up comedy but it is kind of like stand-up comedy. It's all those things together. — Quentin Tarantino

Rap is poetry set to music. But to me it's like a jackhammer. — Bette Midler

Kerner decided to trade my rights to the Chicago Stags, which sounded better to me than Tri-Cities, but the Stags folded up almost immediately. — Bob Cousy

To create anything ... is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. — Tom Bissell

Rap and spoken word have reawakened the country to poetry in itself. Texting and Twitter encourage creative uses of casual language, in ways I have celebrated widely. But we've fallen behind on savoring the formal layer of our language. — John McWhorter

It's bad poetry executed by people that can't sing. That's my definition of Rap. — Peter Steele

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold the principles received by me when I was sane, not mad
as I am now. Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth
so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane
quite insane, with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations are all I have at this hour to stand; there I plant my foot. — Charlotte Bronte

When I rap, I get to express myself in a way where putting words together is like poetry, and sometimes it's better to talk in certain expressions than sing, you know? So I love, I love to rhyme when I want to express certain things. — Wyclef Jean

Giving builds loyal customers and turns those customers into supporters ... You can find passion and profit and meaning all at once, right now. — Blake Mycoskie

The rhyme pad was a spell book - it summoned asphalt elementals, elder gods, and weeping ancestors, all of whom had your back. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

He'd (Yogi Berra) fall in a sewer and come up with a gold watch. — Casey Stengel

I don't think rap really fits in to 'American Idol' in the sense that I believe rap is an art form in itself more akin to poetry, more akin to drama, if you will. — Nigel Lythgoe

I write poetry, and I put it to a beat - I mean, that's what they call rap. — Keith Stanfield