I understand what rappers are talking about. I think rap is less about educating people about the black community and more about making money.
I would say that I'm more moved by melody, even though I love to rap.
Rap music's been around for too long now to be inspirational. The words are, but the music isn't.
Rap is always evolving. It's easy for the old school to hate the new school, but it's a music that got a little stifled I think, by the Internet a little bit.
I really love rap music. I grew up in the '80s and '90s with Public Enemy, N.W.A., LL Cool J - I'm a hip-hop encyclopedia. But I got kind of frustrated with the chauvinistic side of rap music, the one that makes it hard to write songs about love and relationships.
When you look at a guy like a Jay-Z or look at a guy like a Nas, you don't necessarily qualify them as conscious rap purely, although they are extremely conscious of the social inequities that prevail.
Baseball players have such a bad rap of, like, 'We don't work out or we're not strong or this or that.' Guys work so hard in baseball, it's incredible. But people don't know that.
Escapist literature gets a bad rap. But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.
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.
I remember being told 'Someone's gonna make a fortune out of this rap thing' and thinking 'no way'.
I'm not really into rap.
I love Lady Gaga and I love Katy Perry and R&B and rap music... I love big, American pop music.
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.
I have done a lot of work for affordable housing, rental housing. I understand the rap on me and other liberals is, oh, we push poor people into homeownership. And it's exactly the opposite of the case. We were trying to prevent those kinds of bad loans.
I live in New Jersey now, which always gets a bad rap here and there, but I must say, I enjoy living here too.
When you do rap albums, you got to train yourself. You got to constantly be in character.
Speaking out against rap music is useless, and it's futile. The reality is there's criticism for everything, but Jay-Z is one of the most remarkable artists of our time of any genre, and as a hip-hop artist he carries the weight of that art form with such splendor and grace and genius.
I was a metalhead and then I was into the rap and then I was a metalhead again.
It's bad poetry executed by people that can't sing. That's my definition of Rap.
The only time I ever really got into rap was back in the early '90s, and bands like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Gang Starr. Musically, they were really interesting. But when hip-hop acts start sampling Sting or Phil Collins, then I just don't get it at all.
To me, the whole thing with the roots of rap music was when the DJ had to supply all the music for the group with two turntables. And the whole criteria of what that DJ would use had nothing to do with what type of band made a record.
If women dabble in rap but they're not rappers, to get from dabbling to doing it is really difficult, confidence-wise.
I never really thought I was going to be a singer, honestly. I never listened to singers; I always listened to rap music.
To me, it isn't tight sweaters. That's not what rap is. That's not hip-hop at all. Every phase went through changing up their dress styles and all that, but since Run DMC came out, it's been baggy jeans.
Rap is just to me very annoying.
I listen to music for emotion and I get zero emotion from rap.
You have film actors doing TV, rap stars doing TV, with everyone kind of crossing the line.
When I first got into the rap game, I had an early dream of unifying rappers.
An MC is somebody who can control the crowd. An MC is a master of ceremonies so not only can you say your rap, you can rock the party.
David Bowie's my favorite musician. I love him above all, but I'm really into rap a lot right now.
When you've been raised in care, rap music isn't just about guns and sexism. They're talking about real things you can hang on to, problems of identity that you have sympathy with. It's not just about the music, with rap: when I was in care, it meant a whole lot more than that.
As far as anybody in the rap game ever tryin' to assassinate my character, that's impossible. You talkin' about a man who has always walked the walk and talked the talk.
I look at rap as an opportunity to act. My head is full of different characters - in each song I'm auditioning a character.
A lot of the stuff I've accumulated over the last few years of touring I thought was really interesting. Like sounds, sound bites, and beats even, but they weren't good dance beats they weren't ones anyone would want to rap over or anything.
I think 'Country Girl' is one song that can veer into country or hip-hop or rap. You can listen to it and enjoy the humor and the fun in it.
I always thought I'd look corny in the type of rap video in the club with girls and all that type of stuff. I just didn't think I could really pull that off. We always think it's more fun and better just to go outside the box and to use our videos to show cool concepts.
