Quotes & Sayings About Rap Music

In high school I had a boyfriend who was super into rap, so I was into Too $hort and Wu-Tang for a little while. And my best friend's older brother would sometimes drive us home in this pimped-out truck, and he'd play all his dirty rap music. We thought we were really cool. — Kirsten Dunst

There is rap music in all my films. In 'La Vie des Morts,' there is rap music too. It's because I'm French, and when it appeared in 1978, it was so new, it set off my musical imagination. — Arnaud Desplechin

Rap music is really good when you're traumatized. — Kim Gordon

I listen to a lot of music, and I listen to some rap, and I do like listening to Biggie Smalls. — Ed Oxenbould

We missed a lot of church, so the music is our confessional. — Big Boi

My earliest memories of rap music was mixed with my earliest memories of reggae music. They were big sounds around the way, heavy bass lines, strong messages, definitely. — Nas

I sat down with my long time business partner and Rap-A-Lot CEO James Prince to review the music that we had and quickly came up with an outstanding track list. 'The Epilogue' is the perfect opportunity to release some great material to the fans and a proper final chapter for the Trill-ogy. Good music is timeless. — Bun B.

There are poor white people who hear rap music and feel it is about them, because it is. That's why you have an Eminem and a Bubba Sparxxx and rappers like that. — Russell Simmons

When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion. — T.F. Hodge

Not everyone agrees on music. Some people like rap, some like country - it's all an opinion. F the critics. — Vanilla Ice

It's not that you don't make any money doing conscious rap music. You make a lot of money doing this, but if you're greedy and you're not satisfied with $500,000 a year, and you want $2 million a year, then you will suffer as a conscious rap artist. — KRS-One

Look at music: I've always loved hiphop and rap, and now there's this whole progressive movement, with De La Soul and Mos Def, Common. It's some of the best stuff around. — Ryan Phillippe

We Gonna Win' is a song of triumph, It represents my personal belief that with hard work, talent and dedication, everything is possible. It's a one of a kind marriage between rap and classical music, where the music doesn't accompany the vocalist, but rather stands on its own. — Miri Ben-Ari

When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume, even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. I am mortified by my music choices. — Roxane Gay

It's lifestyle music. It's not like some secretary who likes some pop song, but can't name who the band is; whereas a heavy metal fan is into every aspect of it. We'll see if rap holds up to that. Run-DMC seemed to be the Led Zeppelin of rap. — Rob Zombie

I bet you never heard of a playa with no game,
Told the truth to get what I want, but shot it with no shame.
Take this music dead serious while others entertain.
I see they makin' they paper so I guess I can't complain ... or can I?
I feel they disrespectin' the whole thang.
Them hooks like sellin' dope to black folks,
And I choke when the food they serve ain't tastin' right,
My stomach can't digest it even when I bless it ... — Andre Benjamin

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

I think rap music is the sole reason for a lot of black acceptance in pop culture; because the music is very popular, it gets our image out in other ways than in movies. — Ice Cube

I think all music - not just rap - has fallen into this very diluted, delusional state, where everyone's singing about money and having cars, and having all this fun; when really, people are losing their homes. — Ice-T

I think music talks to you on an emotional level, regardless of where you're from. I guess I related to the tempo of rap, the aggressiveness. — Iggy Azalea

Rap is hardcore street music but there are women out there who can hang with the best male rappers. What holds us back is that girls tend to rap in these high, squeaky voices. It's irritating. You've gotta rap from the diaphragm. — Cheryl James

I don't think you can be a good musician if you just listen to rap, or just the [type of music] you do. You gotta be open to other ideas. — Freddie Gibbs

Then one of them asked why Japanese kids try to ape American kids? The clothes, the rap music, the skateboards, the hair. I wanted to say that it's not America they're aping, it's the Japan of their parents that they're rejecting. And since there's no home-grown counter culture, they just take hold of the nearest one to hand, which happens to be American. But it's not American culture exploiting us. It's us exploiting it. — David Mitchell

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

Until House came along I don't think the English made very good dance records, you know, there were very few really good English Rap records, whereas once House came along all of a sudden we started and now I think we probably lead the world, and have overtaken America in dance music. — Fatboy Slim

I can see myself retiring from rapping, but I don't think from music. After that, I think I'd just go into some other kind of music, 'cuz I'm a worldwide fan of music, all types of music, all cultures, so I'll always be involved. — Redman

I listen to a lot of different music. I love hip-hop. I'm a big underground rap fan. I listen to the likes of J. Cole. Lately, I've also been getting into techno house music. And I've been on an Eighties retro kick, and I've even been experimenting with some rock. — Denzel Whitaker

No, I can't do rap music! — Dolly Parton

The government recognized immediately that Rap music has enormous revolutionary potential and politicians immediately came together to end it. — Assata Shakur

In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music. — James Fenton

I met some brothers out from Canada recently who are real cool people. They make Spanish-language music called Cold Blue and I met then at a Lat-Rap conference and they seem like real good peoples from Central America ... and that's what it is. It's just based on mutual respect. So when I meet people like that I'm like, "if y'all going to be real with me, I'm going to be real with y'all" and that's all it takes. — Immortal Technique

I have tried ... believe me, I have tried to like rap music. It makes me feel so very, very old. I have tried to get home with the downies. — Dylan Moran

We were coming out of the black community with this thing called rap music, which was basically black men yelling at the top of their lungs about what we liked and what we didn't like. It was disturbing to the status quo. It really shook things up. And those in power didn't know what to make of us, but they knew that we had to be silenced, stopped in any way from expressing our outrage. — Chuck D

We listen to rap lyrics, but few study the history. One of the most significant contributions of hip hop. It offers a profound social commentary on the black experience. This is an aspect of the music that is overlooked because most people choose to pay more attention to "the hook" (the catchy repetitive phrase) than the complete body of work. In doing so, the listener misses the message: the essence of the music, the breakdown of the bars. That's tantamount to someone who is able to quote scripture, but has never read the bible. — Carlos Wallace

I love a lot of music that's considered folk music, but I also love a lot of music that's considered punk or considered rap. I don't mind being called a folk singer. But it seems a bit limiting. I want to be able to write whatever kind of song I want. — Langhorne Slim

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

What I'm trying to do is break the genre from what is rap and what is music. — Wyclef Jean

I didn't get into music until the early 90s when I heard rap music for the first time. — Gonjasufi

I think rap music is brought up, gangster rap in particular, as well as video games, every other thing they try to hang the ills of society on as a scapegoat. — Ice Cube

I love rap music. — Chumlee

I like to get in my own world. When I'm getting ready for a meet, I always have headphones on, listening to rap music to get myself fired up — Michael Phelps

I would love to be friends with Kendrick Lamar because I am just a huge fan of his music, I think he is so cool and he uses so many interesting sounds and has such good melodies and is just a beautiful rapper, his raps are just so well-written and his tracks are so insane, I am obsessed with him. — Alana Haim

I remember rap music. We used to party and dance off of it. Today it's all about a whole different angle ... Rappers are going against each other, and it's more of a bragging, boasting thing. — Flavor Flav

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

I grew up in the '90s. My goal isn't to be a '90s rapper, but I have little hints of '90s influence in my music. It's a modern approach to classic rap. — Action Bronson

The justification for rap rock seems to be that if you take really bad rock and put really bad rap over it, the result is somehow good, provided the raps are barked by an overweight white guy with cropped hair and forearm tattoos. — John Jeremiah Sullivan

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

Some of Eminem's rap songs kind of have the teenage love songs like the fifties love songs. It's kind of like domestic drama set to music. He is really good storyteller. — Bruce Dickinson

Run DMC brought us out of that underground-only feel. They brought rap above ground and made it respectable as an art form to mainstream music. — Ice Cube

For me, I like old-school rap music. There was a time when music was so, so rich overall, and the content of what people talked about was so deep on every level, song-for-song, pound-for-pound, and on radio, there was so much content. I gravitate more towards that type of music, to be honest. — Ciara

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

I wish I was a rapper. There are certainly times when I wish I could just drop an album and channel all my ideas, anger, humor and energy into some music and be done with it. — Todd Boyd

Rap music ... sounds like somebody feeding a rhyming dictionary to a popcorn popper. — Tom Robbins

With rap music, because it's all so on the street, you get treated like a street cat: "All right, you've been eatin' enough, you're fat, get out of the way now and let somebody else come by." — Nas

Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music. — Jay-Z

I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping. — Nina Simone

I grew up in the Bronx. I'm into rap music. — Abel Ferrara

When you're trying to bring the streets into rap to prove a point, then you already lost. You separate the two, and that ain't to be played with. You've got people that lost their lives and people that are doing real time. If we gon' make music, let's just make music. — Young Jeezy

I believe hip hop's characteristic beliefs as a whole are misunderstood, underappreciated and highly underestimated. — Carlos Wallace

I describe me sound as international: reggae, pop, rap, R&B all in one. I think I have my own style. I can't really even describe it. People say, "What type of genre is your music?" It's Sean Kingston genre. I have my own genre. No disrespect to no artist or dudes out there. I feel like I am my own person. I am doing my own thing. — Sean Kingston

Rap music's been around for too long now to be inspirational. The words are, but the music isn't. — Alexander McQueen

We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock. — Nate Ruess

I like to make music, I like rap music. Even if I'm white, I support that music. If I want to support it or any other white kid wants to support it more power to them. — Kid Rock

Comedy is the only form of entertainment where the audience doesn't know what to expect. In an evening, you might get ten comics doing ten different things. That's not what happens when you go to hear music. There isn't a classical performance followed by a hoedown followed by rap. — Jon Stewart

I made the decision that I was going to make rap music in, like, fourth grade, so it's been something I was saying for a long time. — Chance The Rapper

We loved that form of music. We're all huge rap fans, so we just incorporated it. — Charlie Benante

They don't want to see rap music. They don't want to see the Beastie Boys. They don't care what we're doing. They want one thing and one thing only: that's to see Madonna come on stage. — Ad-Rock

Kids who are least impressive in my class are the ones who only listen to one kind of music. They only listen to country or only to rap or to gospel or anything. It's a sad thing. I try really hard to get them to go out and listen to things. It's amazing what you learn ... I'm still trying to learn. It's not like I'm going to be a calypso singer. That's not going to happen, but I'm sure there's something in that, that I can learn from and apply to my own work. — Andy Wilkinson

When I see things that are inspiring, I must write a song about it. Some people make a t-shirt or slap something on a wall with paint, but I must make music and freestyle rap. — Flula Borg

...While many who have debated the image of female sexuality have put "explicit" and "self-objectifying" on one side and "respectable" and "covered-up" on the other, I find this a flawed means of categorization. [...] There is a creative possibility for liberatory explicitness because it may expand the confines of what women are allowed to say and do. We just need to refer to the history of blues music - one full of raunchy, irreverent, and transgressive women artists - for examples. Yet the overwhelming prevalence of the Madonna/whore dichotomy in American culture means that any woman who uses explicit language or images in her creative expression is in danger of being symbolically cast into the role of whore regardless of what liberatory intentions she may have. — Imani Perry

My music is pretty honest. I can't rap on science fiction. Punk is from the street. — Rick James

In a way, all recorded music is reduced to the same level, no matter what it is. You find it in the store, you put it on and, "Oh, that's not cool. That's gangsta rap. That's white supremacist punk." But in a way, the content is removed from the intention of the people that made it. That's the commercial level of music. — Eyvind Kang

A homeless man once told me that dancing to rap music is the cultural equivalent of masturbating, and I'd sort of fell the same way about playing John Madden Football immediately after filing my income tax: It's fun, but - somehow - vaguely pathetic. — Chuck Klosterman

We have to remember that the experience of gangsta rap as such in its foundation is an anti-systemic experience primarily. And it is an anti-systemic experience that is not in some cases politicized, but in general results in a much more transgressive, much more uncomfortable music for the structures of power, than conscious rap or political rap. — Bocafloja

I don't like putting a name on my music. It's not just country and rap; it's got Southern rock, classic rock. — Big Smo

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

The music becomes more pure and soulful when it's true, and it has to be true these days with the way the internet works, and the way the game works, everyone wants authentic raps. — J. Cole

I think Lafayette wants to rap in French now. I have to go learn some French.
Damn it, Lafayette — Lin-Manuel Miranda

We're still going to Loggerhead this afternoon, right?" Hi glanced around, then dropped his voice. "For that ... home movie thing?"
I nodded. "We might as well deal with what we can. Let's take the afternoon shuttle. I'll think of an excuse for Kit, thought I'm open to suggestions."
"Ben?" Shelton asked.
"Not today. I think the two of us need a little distance."
The bell rang. We gathered our things and headed for the door.
"Tell Kit we're cutting a music video," Hi suggested as we walked. "Something real gangster, so we need to smash-cut our dance routines. Lay down some visuals. We could offer to let him rap over the second verse."
I gave him a thumbs-up. "Foolproof. Anyone need a locker stop? — Kathy Reichs

Growing up listening to rap music, you almost feel like you should have haters. That's an important part of being a successful musician. It's a good thing, I guess. — Ezra Koenig

Rap music is just computerised crap. I listen to Top of the Pops and after three songs I feel like killing someone. — George Harrison

I grew up listening to all kinds of music, everything from country to rock, pop, R&B and even rap, so for me, music is music and a great song is a great song. — Jason Aldean

There is genuine Hip Hop; a message that connects, rocks a crowd, and motivates a people and then there is what is left ... instead of Hip Hop we have Hip replacement. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

I t was a well-known fact among Christian homeschoolers that public
schools were bastions of gangs, drugs, teen pregnancy, rap music, pop culture, secular humanism, witchcraft, and body piercings. — Josh Sundquist

They had all this talent, and they had no instruments. So they started rap music. They rhymed on their own. They made their own sounds and their own movements. — Max Roach

If you want to say something profound, writing from your heartbeat is different than writing from the loud voices you get from music. If they're rapping from noise, it's about robbing people. It's that simple. — Russell Simmons

Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape; that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all I love. — Eminem

If you want to speak about different ethnicities and diversity, rap and hip-hop are all over the planet. Every country, from Turkey to Australia, now has tons of hip-hop artists. The music and artistry have moved way faster than the corporatization of the music. You do need organization and opportunity for these artists to express themselves, and I don't think it has to come from a corporate co-signing. — Chuck D

I hate rap music, which to me sounds like a bunch of angry men shouting, possibly because the person who was supposed to provide them with a melody never showed up. — Dave Barry

To me, rap music is bigger than who's the coolest rapper, the biggest rapper. It's everything about your personality. — Diplo

To be honest, I was unaware of the huge frat-rap scene that was taking over the blogosphere until I found myself right in the middle of it. But there are really a ton of talented dudes out there doing this, and I'm just having a great time making music and being a part of it all. — Mike Stud

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

If I like hardcore straight-edge punk music, gentle psychedelic folk music, gangster rap, indie-rock with a lot of guitar pedals, and I find inspiration from all these things in different songs of mine, shouldn't I be allowed to make any of this kind of music that I want? And it's the same for the comic books, why should I only make autobiographical stories? Or only political stories? Or only superhero stories? Or only comedy stories? I am a bit creatively desperate, when I sit with a pen and paper I am desperate for ANY idea that makes me excited, I don't care what kind of idea it is! — Jeffrey Lewis

I listened to a lot of old school, golden era music. It gave me a lot of insight on how to rap and give my all. — Big K.R.I.T.

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

My conception of New York City came from rap music. I envisioned it as a place where people shot each other on the street and got away with it; no one walked on the streets, rather people drove in their sports cars looking for nightclubs and for violence. — Ishmael Beah

Let the voice be the voice of the voiceless and let it come from the world of rap music to keep the stereotype and the peace at the same time. — Chuck D

God gave us music, so we play with our words. — Talib Kweli

I have such an eclectic taste in music. Come to a backyard BBQ at my house, and I will run the gamut from Skynyrd to Sinatra to '90s grunge, rap, R&B, and classic rock. I have issues. If I had to pick one, I love this country artist named Craig Morgan. His music and his songs are so relatable and tell such vivid stories. — Mike Vogel

Rap music is amazing, it's beautiful. But the problem is the lyrics. The person who writes the lyrics - that's the problem. — Emmanuel Jal