Two records put me over the top with hip-hop. One of them was 'Planet Rock,' and the other had no lyrics - it was called 'Numbers,' from a group called Kraftwerk. Every kid in the 'hood in New York and New Jersey was popping, locking, and breaking to...
What's more condescending and corny than someone telling you how much more money they have than you and telling you basically, 'I don't care about poor people,' which is a large part of what you hear of corporate hip-hop on the radio.
When I started to make music at the end of the '90s, I saw myself highly influenced by hip-hop and techno, but I wanted to apply these ideas to something from the local sound; something that had identity, that would say who we were and where we came ...
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 singin...
The thing that's good about Hip Hop is that it has experimented with a lot of different sounds and music.
Hip-hop started as this niche moment, and the values of it, the cultures that it carried on its back; language, clothes, the way you wear your clothes, the items that you consume, all came with the music as an art form. And those things helped transf...
So I'm all, "Owned! Bee-yatch! Dog fucking owned you!" Doing a minor booty dance of ownage, perhaps, in retrospect, a bit prematurely. (I believe hip-hop to be the apprpriate language for taunting, at least until I learn French.)
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.
It doesn't get any more underground, conscious or indie than Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, but because they got a couple of really big pop hits, actually some of the biggest pop hits that hip-hop has ever seen, people are missing that part of their story. ...
With The Fugees initially, and even with 'Miseducation', it was very hip-hop - always a singing over beats. I don't think people have really heard me sing out. So if I do record again, perhaps it will have an expanded context. Where people can hear a...
I never made beats to make beats; I only made them when there was a record to make them for. That's one of the things that has changed in hip-hop that's made me like it less. It feels much more like it's a producer-driven medium, where there are all ...
I made my name and reputation DJing in hip-hop clubs in New York. 'Celebrity DJ' is a term that I hated. To me a celebrity DJ is someone that's on 'Big Brother' or in some kind of B-movie who gets a gig to DJ even though they're not talented enough t...
White people couldn't do black music back in the day because they weren't funky or bad enough. They weren't from the ghettoes, but hip-hop and R&B changed all of that because white kids want to be down with it. They wanted to learn it so they studied...
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 me...
If I focus on being an activist and my job is to be a rapper, I'm not going to be as good of a rapper. I need to focus on hip-hop and focus on making the music, so that when the activists come to me and they need my voice to create a platform, then I...
I'm a hip-hop guy, and the first time I heard Eminem was in '96. He was on a record with Shabban Siddiq. I was like, 'Who is this guy? He's dope!' First album came out: awesome. Second album came out: awesome. Third album, I was like, 'Eh.' He starte...
You want to buy cars and houses and castles, all of that's on you and how America has systematized your mind to be into materialism. Hip-hop ain't got nothing to do with that. I'm glad that anybody making money has picked themselves up - I just want ...
In hip-hop, what you have is you have a lot of formulaic-type bands or rappers that come up. They saw something on the radio, and they want to mimic that formula. And that's just boring. I don't wanna record something just to make money; I want to re...
Hip-hop is all about impact, baby. You can sell records, you can be two-times platinum, you can be gold... but if you lame, you lame, man. We try to provide the exact opposite of that. It's style, individuality, confidence. We exude that.
To me, hip hop will never be right until female rappers have a stronger voice in it.
The part of modern pop music I don't know much about is hip hop.
