Rap Life Quotes & Sayings

Whenever an art form - music, book, drama, song - is dragged into the seminar rooms, it is finished as a force. Nothing is more deadly than the anatomizing of scholarship, since the study of art, any art - even the obscene, semiliterate yawp and grunt of rap - drains the life from it. — Paul Theroux

Rap culture is interesting and different and has purpose but it has a non-romantic view of life and of social feelings. There may be a void in that. — Hal David

A simple right or left can mean life or death,
Epic fail or nice success,
Days of pleasure or nights of stress. — Ka

So lovers of life, don't keep your hopes up high.
Why? Cause it's just a matter of time before it's your turn to die.
But until then, when you stop breathin',
It's time to stand up and fight for what you believe in! — Kirk Jones

I never let the worst things in life get the best of me.
So take these testes and, ummm ... open sesame. — King Sun

In this life ain't no happy endings;
Only pure beginnings followed by years of sinning and fake repentance. — J. Cole

Being a man is the continuing battle for one's life. One loses a bit of manhood with every stale compromise to the authority of any power in which one does not believe. — H. Rap Brown

My life is Avatar, your life is Precious. — Ras Kass

I never asked to be born, and death's no question.
The sun's still shining off the same old lessons,
Then why does life feel like an educated guess?
And my thoughts are like meals ... I'm a sucker for the seconds. — Amir Mohamed

I'm not big on trying to label it [my rap] or trying to prove people otherwise. I'm just making records that I like and that I wanna make. I'm just making records that relate to me and that relate to my life. If you listen to what I'm saying I'm not talking about anything that isn't my life. I take pride in having truthful lyrics. — Mike Stud

In my mind, not in real life. My rap name will be Optimus Rhymes. Or the Notorious B.o.B. — Bobby Moynihan

Infrareds on little people standing with some big heads,
I was Captain Kirk, walkin' with a black t-shirt.
LAPD, the nurse asked did my knee hurt?
I was in pain, little Martians tryin' ta take my brain,
Hospitals came, detectives wrote down my name.
I was to blame, my life never been the same.
A true story; I tell ya, it'll never bore me.
My classmate died, my other friend named Cory
Drinkin' 40s, he jumped out the project window,
Stabbed himself with a yellow number 2 pencil. — Kool Keith

So called 'late-bloomers' get a bad rap. Sometimes the people with the greatest potential often take the longest to find their path because their sensitivity is a double edged sword- it lives at the heart of their brilliance, but it also makes them more susceptible to life's pains. Good thing we aren't being penalized for handing in our purpose late. The soul doesn't know a thing about deadlines. — Jeff Brown

Never say never - you don't know what's going to happen in the future. — Nikki Sanderson

Rap music came along and saved my life. I started to tell the stories of the streets and that was my way out. — Ice-T

I met a gypsy and she hipped me to some life game,
To stimulate, then activate the left and right brain.
Said, 'Baby boy, you only funky as your last cut.
You focus on the past, your ass'll be a has-what.'
That's one to live by, or either that's one to die to. — Andre Benjamin

I live this life at a pace that anyone can go.
Know your place, and dedicate your role
... To the faith that you'll die alone — Kendrick Lamar

City lights shine bright on my complexion,
Self-reflection ... red hairs flashing at the intersection.
Life is a green light, one star, no script,
Supporting actors ... fresh peaches, no pit. — Action Bronson

When I make the music that I make, when it comes to reggae music, I engulf the whole spirit of it all. It's just like when I do rap music or whatever style of music I do, I have to engulf the character I do and bring that to life. — Snoop Dogg

I've never had a dream in my life,
Because a dream is what you wanna do, but still haven't pursued.
I knew what I wanted, and did it till it was done.
So I've been the dream I wanted to be since Day One. — Aesop Rock

All we want in this life is peace, prosperity and a little paper. — Q-Tip

I think being Shaquille O'Neal would be the most amazing thing. There's nothing I would have done differently in his life. Everything he's done I think is pretty spot on, even, like, the bad rap videos, the shoes, the movies, everything. — David Chang

Her life is deep, but I still dig her — Lil' Wayne

Since hip hop emerged from the South Bronx in the 1970s, it has become an international, multi-billion-dollar phenomenon. It has grown to encompass more than just rap music. Hip hop has created a culture that incorporates ethnicity, art, politics, fashion, technology and urban life." This debunks the widely accepted argument that the genre is inherently divisive. With so many factors converging to create such an intricate, informative and multi-faceted genre, whose history and impact have bridged barriers between artist and society, it is not too complicated an endeavor to understand that its relevance repudiates its notorious reputation. — Carlos Wallace

Yeah, my life a bitch, but you know nothing about her
Been to hell and back, I can show you vouchers — Lil' Wayne

Life Will Put Many Red Lights In Front Of You, But Sometimes We Must Push On The Gas And Trust God — Kendrick Lamar

I know you think my life is good 'cause my diamond piece,
But my life been good since I started finding peace. — Nas

My life is a blunt to the head, a prayer for the dead,
Run around hustlin ... scared of the feds.
They said death is eternal sleep,
But the only thing is you ain't really sure if you prepared for the bed. — Styles P

That's my life. But I don't glorify violence, and I hate jail. The rap game saved me, man: I've got three children, and I wouldn't even think of putting my hand in somebody's pocket or doing something stupid now. — Black Rob

I stared in awe at the Lincoln Memorial. If Honest Abe had come to life and somehow managed to lift his bony twenty-three-foot, four-inch frame from his throne, what would he say? What would he do? Would he break-dance? Would he pitch pennies against the curbside? Would he read the paper and see that the Union he saved was now a dysfunctional plutocracy, that the people he freed were now slaves to rhythm, rap, and predatory lending, and that today his skill set would be better suited to the basketball court than the White House? — Paul Beatty

Know the feelin, when you feelin like a villain,
You be havin good thoughts but the evils be revealin'.
And the stresses of life can take you off the right path,
Jealousy and envy tends to infiltrate your staff ...
We gotta hold it down so we can move on past
All adversities, so we can get through fast. — Q-Tip

Wanna move out the hood and defeat that cancer
I ask how she stay on her feet like dancers
How she keep on adding paint to a life-size canvas. — Lil B

Everything will eventually come to an end,
So try to savor the moment, cause time flies, don't it?
The beauty of life, you gotta make it last for the better,
Cause nothin' lasts forever. — Nas

My life is like a song and I think I know the words,
And as I start to sing along the whole verse becomes a blur.
So I freestyle improv, make mistakes and evolve,
The obstacles repeat, cause naturally it revolves. — MURS

'Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o'er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens. — Miguel De Cervantes

Eat from the Tree of Life and throw away the verbal ham. — Sadat X

Life is a blast when you know what you're doin',
Best to know what you're doin' 'fore your life get ruined.
Life is a thrill when your skill is developed,
If you ain't got a skill or trade, then shut the hell up. — Del Tha Funkee Homosapien

I committed crimes of passion and my soul was suspected,
But it was thrown out of court because of course the Creator and I connected.
He told me, Fear not for thou art protected. Your life is being requested, — Cee Lo Green

The first lady in my life, but now you're gone,
I learned through the years to keep carrying on.
Your picture brings me tears and memories,
The way things could be ... and they should be, but they're not. — Afrika Baby Bam

Life is like a box of chocolates, you fill your body with toxins,
And amoxicillin and penicillin to cure your illness.
But in realness? These medical companies will get you monthly
Prescribing me pills that make me ill, just to comfort me. — Termanology

Me being biracial, me being from Canada but having success in the States, I have all these moments in my life where I'm jumping roof to roof. Black to white. Singing and rapping. — Drake

It seems to me like all these people claim to be the victim,
Acting like the whole entire world is out to get them.
Stand up on your own,
And prove that you are grown,
Because the life that you save may be your own. — Lee Majors

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

See, I don't expect to win a prize for stoic control and dignity at mourning time. Death deserve tantrums. Beating back shocked indignation, kicks in the groin, stones, classified unacceptable, not to be tolerated, not to be wooed, not to be conspired with. Only then can music, dance, movies, plays, rap be about life. Only then can life be cherished and adored. — Ruby Dee

All my life I've been dealing with my race because of where I grew
up [Detroit] and being in the rap game. I'm at a boiling
point ... Anybody who pulls the race card is getting it right back in
their face. — Eminem

Life is a beach, and these hoes try'na lay out — Lil' Wayne

When Lin optioned his book, Ron was relieved that the Founding Father who had the most dramatic and least appreciated life story would finally get his due - even though a rap musical was the last way that Ron had anticipated Hamilton getting it. — Lin-Manuel Miranda

Life is like a lunchroom at school. In this industry you've got little individual tables of actors, singers, rap stars, this, that, the other. But it's a big industry that also encompasses anyone in the public eye. — Hayden Panettiere

At 24 I decided that my life is enough for me, and I stopped looking for some other piece to complete it. I also learned how to needlepoint ironic cross-stitches of rap lyrics and gave them to my friends as presents. I'll let you decide which is the more important revelation. — Taylor Swift

One of the fun things as an actor is to find a character that if you were to look up a rap sheet about them, you might say, 'I don't really necessarily want to hang out with this guy' or 'I would never be this kind of guy in my life.' I think it's part of an actor's job to say, 'Maybe you could be.' — Jason Ritter

Say there's a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter - for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that's saying is that he's living a fantasy life of rebellion. — Eminem

I came into the rap game in 1992; my life was changing, but my group wasn't successful; I also saw the biggest rappers in the world die all of a sudden in the ensuing years, so it was a matter of conquering yourself before you can conquer the world. — Ja Rule

I know that in the rap game you've got a lot of people, that come from poverty, was born in poverty and if it wasn't for hiphop they'd still be living in that. So when I think of hiphop, I think hiphop saves lifes, hiphop changes lives. — Jon Connor

I was literally told for 'The Show Goes On' that I shouldn't rap too deep. I shouldn't be too lyrical. It just needs to be something easy on the eyes. Like a record company telling Picasso that we don't need these abstract interpretations of life, where people have to sit down and look at it and break it down. — Lupe Fiasco

My life owes me. Like an overdose, I'm slowly
Drifting into the arms of trouble, then trouble holds me — K'naan

As kids we used to laugh/Who knew that life would move this fast?
Who knew I'd have to look at you through a glass?
And look, tell me you ain't did it, you ain't did it
And if you did, then that's family business. — Kanye West

You can be the ugliest man in the world but once you got money, you can have all the women in the world. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

You can take back all the things you give,
But you can't take back the days you live.
Life is to some people who've been on earth
Livin' every single day for what it's worth.
I live life just how I please,
Satisfy one person I know: that's me. — Too $hort

You know, jazz is the mother of all American music. R&B and pop and rap and everything are the branches on the main tree of the life of music, American music, which is jazz. — Eric Burdon

In my mind, New York was the place where they had the underground rap shows and I could get in on some ciphers and just rap. This whole fantasy world I had created in my head about New York just from listening to the music my whole life, like, I'ma go up there and do that. But when I came up here, there was none of that, that scene was dead. — J. Cole

Moving to Australia was not a career move, but a quality of life issue. It has no guns, no God, and no gangster rap. As an Ethiopian cab driver said to me the other day when I was returning from a gig in Sydney, Australia is a peaceful, democratic place. I like the relatively stress free lifestyle. It's worth the drop in income. — Franklyn Ajaye

It's an accompaniment to life. It's not something that I do to rap; I smoke when I open my eyes ... I don't know any other feeling. — Action Bronson

Life can change your directions, even when you ain't planned it.
All you can do is handle it, worst thing you can do is panic. — T.I.

Happiness has a bad rap. People say it shouldn't be your goal in life. Oh, yes it should. — Richard Dreyfuss

I don't control life, but I can control how i react to it — Macklemore

The average rap life is two or three albums. You're lucky to get to your second album in rap! — Jay-Z

People who go out and try to be a rebel at night,
Try to make up for the fact that they settled in life. — Immortal Technique

The IRS'll never sweat me or even put up a fight ...
Cause I'm sure I've paid more in taxes than you've made in yo' life! — Ludacris

Hip-hop was a big part of my life growing up, especially West Coast gangster rap. The reason I was able to listen to it so freely was that my mom couldn't hear any of it, so we would be driving along just blaring Too $hort's horrible misogynistic stuff, and my mom would just turn to us and say, "This is great. I can feel the bass. It sounds so nice." And we're like, "Yeah, mom. We can feel the bass, too." — Moshe Kasher

Doubt gets a bad rap. Doubting doesn't mean you've stopped believing, but that you've started thinking. Sheep doubt nothing. Chances are you'll get further in life by questioning things than by living like something that ends up as dinner and a sweater. — Amy Alkon

Damn right I like the life I live,
Cause I went from negative to positive. — The Notorious B.I.G.

I don't try to rap about or emulate the life of another person. — Lazarus Of Bethany

We live in a society created by an empire
That's based on terror ... welcome to the One World Era,
A complete interruption to your lil' paltry-ass life,
That you thought you was livin, and what you been given. — Coolio

I got into rapping by being a victim of circumstances; it was a hard situation with my brother. Mainly my older brother got hit with a life sentence, so he kind of inspired me. — Trae Tha Truth

Not all dogs are perfect dogs, but all dogs are inherently good. Like people, we are affected by environment and circumstance. Some breeds get a bad rap because sometimes humans breed them to be a certain way, like overly macho or protective. In our life on earth we are dependent on humans for everything, including our breeding. We can be bred for aggression or we can be bred for peace. — Kate McGahan

You've got to realize that the world's a test,
You can only do your best and let Him do the rest.
You've got your life, and got your health,
So quit procrastinating and push it yourself. — Cee Lo Green

Life is real, reality is not a dream.
Those who chose to sleep ... I wake em up,
Cause you're sleepin with your mouth open hummin deez nuts. — King Sun

Biggie was a lyrical genius: he was a musical painter with words. As he rapped, you would see the picture come to life as you heard his story. You hear a lot of rappers rap; you hear a lot of singers sing, but you don't see the movie in your head the way you do when you hear Biggie rap. — R. Kelly

Life's a maze, you twist and you turn through it
The driest of droughts, maneuvered and I earned through it — Clipse

Yo, it's 1 universal law but 2 sides to every story,
3 strikes and you be in for life, mandatory.
4 MC's murdered in the last 4 years,
I ain't tryin to be the 5th one, the Millennium is here.
Yo, it's 6 million ways to die, from the 7 deadly thrills,
8-year olds gettin' found with 9 mill's.
It's 10 P.M., where your seeds at? What's the deal? — Mos Def

Long as I live large, life will be luxury,
Ladies in Lamborghinis ... love is like luck to me. — Redman

Life is a gift so rap up your troubles and throw them away. — Benny Bellamacina

Then she was in a different part of the club, and she and Kitty were dancing to a rap song they both knew all the words to, and Kitty was wearing a thin plastic headband with antennae off of which wobbled life-sized sparkly pink penises. How marvelous this headband was! Even more marvelously, Kitty pointed out that Liz was wearing an identical one. Truly, it was a magical night. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Won't cha ... picture life as my wife, just think:
Full length mink, fat X and O links,
Bracelets to match, conversation was all that,
Showed you the safe combinations and all that.
Guess you could say you's the one I trusted ...
Who would ever think that you would spread like mustard? — The Notorious B.I.G.

And know that every struggle in life is there to teach you a lesson
It's times like this that make you — Macklemore

I met this girl when I was ten years old,
And what I loved most she had so much soul.
She was old school, when I was just a shorty
Never knew throughout my life she would be there for me. — Common

According to Life & Style Weekly, 50 Cent may be working on Lindsay Lohan's next album. Finally, a match made in rap heaven. He's a convicted drug dealer who's been shot nine times, and she spent 84 minutes in prison. This is a big step for Lindsay. The last time Lindsay got near a black guy she ran over his foot. — Chelsea Handler

Life is short if you don't notice it'll pass you by,
That's why my head is in the clouds trying to pass the sky. — Ludacris

My life after childhood has two main stories: the story of the hustler and the story of the rapper, and the two overlap as much as they diverge. I was on the streets for more than half of my life from the time I was thirteen years old. People sometimes say that now I'm so far away from that life - now that I've got businesses and Grammys and magazine covers - that I have no right to rap about it. But how distant is the story of your own life ever going to be? The feelings I had during that part of my life were burned into me like a brand. It was life during wartime. — Jay-Z

Long ago, returning from some turbulent sequence of misdeeds, the younger, beloved son of the house of Culter would rap at the door of his mother's chamber, and be admitted, and closing the door, would bend upon her the grave, sweet gaze, made of mischief and love, that melted the bones in her body. Then, sinking to one knee, he would kiss her hand, in obedience and humility.

Now he rapped, and she heard his voice speak her name and, rising, she faced him as the door opened and shut and he stood, his bearing and looks unlike anything she had ever seen in him before, in any extremity. He said, 'I have to find Philippa.' And then, walking into the room, he dropped on one knee and said, 'I will promise anything you wish, to the end of my life, if you will tell me the name of the house that you know of. — Dorothy Dunnett

Everything has a price ...
No matter if it's fortune, fame or your life.
I understood later that it's all about paper,
Everything has a fee in the land of the free. — O.C.

I been drunk most my life, don't ask me why.
Through ninth grade, I ain't go to high school,
... I went to school high. — Styles P

Every time I write these words they become a taboo,
Making sure my punctuation curve, every letter here's true,
Living my life in the margin, and that metaphor was proof. — Kendrick Lamar

Hold your head up, there's a light in the sky
I know your fed up but you must try to survive
Each moment's precious, don't let life pass you by
Keep focused, keep your eyes on the prize. — Macklemore

Gangsta rap often reaches higher than its ugliest, lowest common denominator, misogyny, violence, materialism and sexual transgression are not its exclusive domain. At its best, this music draws attention to complex dimensions of ghetto life ignored by most Americans. Indeed, gangsta rap's in-your-face style may do more to force America to confront crucial social problems than a million sermons or political speeches. — Michael Eric Dyson

I look into mother's stomach, wonder if you are a boy or a girl
Turnin' this woman's womb into a tomb
But she and I agree, a seed we don't need
You would've been much more than a mouth to feed
But someone I would've fed this information I read
To someone my life for you I would've had to leave
Instead I led you to death. — Common

Picked up the yoga, put down the soda.
My healthy mind ... that's what's gon' help me over.
Life of a stoner (if you still concerned),
I never lose, I only win or learn;
It's all about your state of mind. — Dizzy Wright

This is the industry that wants [music], the rap industry. You have to be on deck all the time, but you do not have the time to do the album. It is an energy, it must be present in everyday life. — Young Thug

Life is a gamble, we scramble for money,
I might crack a smile, but ain't a damn thing funny. — Prodigy

I am obsessed with rap music - it's such a big part of my life. — Randall Park