For us to keep claiming this isn't Hip Hop and that isn't Hip Hop doesn't make sense to me.
I'm gonna try and change the course of hip hop again.
The thing that's good about Hip Hop is that it has experimented with a lot of different sounds and music.
I've been a hip hop head forever. So when it turned out that we were gonna start getting celebrity guests for every show, I wanted rap guys from the get-go.
The part of modern pop music I don't know much about is hip hop.
I'm 60, and I did 60-year-old women songs. I'm not trying to be the Hip-Hop Queen, although I am the original Hip Hop Queen.
How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white.
I don't only like rap music. There's everything from R&B to crazy gangster rap, hip hop... everything! But it all blends together nicely. It's like a magical music rainbow.
People get caught up in worshipping certain rappers, or they try to demonise hip hop by looking at what certain rappers are doin' in their lives.
As a brother and sister, our tastes were pretty different growing up. He liked a lot of early hip hop. My dad didn't understand it and would try to talk him out of it.
I live in a neighborhood that's really filled with sound - there's a lot of Jamaican auto body shops, and the guys next door play hip hop.
I definitely want to work with Thom Yorke. I want to work with Damien Marley; there's a few international artists I wouldn't mind working with - like Massacre Children would be ill, and I still have an affinity for the U.K. hip hop scene.
Hip hop has been an integral part of my life and my whole career. I started off doing videos with Ice Cube and Dre and Mary J. Blige and TLC.
From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me.
I was lucky enough to see the original cast of 'In the Heights.' This one blew my mind. The infusion of Latin, hip hop and rap with musical theatre, great storytelling and talent was a powerful combination to me during a time when I'd not been moved by much!
When the band begins to get a name for themselves, and the writers get assigned to bands, they'll hit somebody who just doesn't like that kind of music, or they love hip hop but hate guitar rock.
When we moved to England in 1986, I was ten years old and I didn't know anything about punk or hip hop. The only words I knew in English were 'dance' and 'Michael Jackson.' We got put in a flat in Mitchum, and the council gave us second hand furniture, second hand clothes and a second hand radio that I took to bed with me every night.
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.
The 'chinked out' style is a school of hip hop - that's the way I like to think of it - that incorporates Chinese elements and sounds.
I have thought about the next steps, and you know, they still don't know that I can dance. They don't know it, and it's frustrating me because I feel that it's an edge that I have, and I'm not talking about I took this hip hop class, I'm talking about this is how people actually know me.
Growing up playing the drums, I idolised Questlove from an early age. 'Phrenology' was the first Roots record that I ever heard, and that was like my introduction to hip hop.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a house where we listened to all kinds of music. We listened to Haitian, hip hop, soul, classical jazz, gospel and Cuban music, to name a few. When you have access to that as a child, it just opens up your world.
I was a fan of heavy music - first metal, then punk, then hip hop.
November is Hip-Hop History Month, where we give celebration to what hip hop has done to bring together people of the world, people of all nationalities, young people, all the political systems and politicians on the planet.
Hip hop classes and ballet are what I've been keeping up with, and of course my usual abdominal workout, which consists of 500 sit-ups a session. Or I take a 30-minute abs class at my gym. But dance classes are a full-body cardio workout, which always brings me success and keeps me feeling great.
I always felt like the Academy was very late in acknowledging things. I've seen them do it with hip hop when it should have been acknowledged. It was already penetrating mass levels of culture and radio, and yet they wouldn't give it a proper category.
A lot of times when I'm at home kickin' it, I don't even listen to hip hop. I listen to all types of music.
For years, I've felt like the loneliest brother on the planet. I don't play basketball, I can't dance, and I'd rather listen to Harry Nilsson than hip hop.
If you see something is going wrong within politics and the world today, then some Hip Hop artist is gonna come along and get straight with it. If they think that there's a lot of racism going on then there's another Hip Hop artist who's gonna come out and speak their mind.
I'm a rapper and, obviously, hip hop rap is my main thing. But I also like to dive into different genres and kind of be a bit more experimental and open myself up a bit, whether that's taking influence from jazz or soul or electronic.
I really love hip hop. My cousin Nas came out with an album 'Life Is Good,' and I love that album, but I also love Maroon 5.
We can come from our own particular point of view and lay it down. We should not be throwing verbal rocks at each other. We're all responsible to continue the growth of Hip Hop.
I was just a kid in love with hip hop music. I love music. I love the culture. I wanted to be a part of it in any way.
If you are handed something, it's a blessing and a curse. Look at hip hop artists, they produced everything themselves. Even people like Robert De Niro are getting into production. Again, it's art vs. marketing. Not everyone can take the risk. You have to break a few eggs to make a good omelet.
The hip hop industry is most likely owned by gays. I happen to think there's a gay mafia in hip hop. Not rappers - the editorial presidents of magazines, the PDs at radio stations, the people who give you awards at award shows.
The blues echoes right through into soul, R&B and hip hop. It's part of the make-up of modern music. You can't turn your back on the blues.
