Big Sean Quotes

When I made 'Detroit vs. Everybody,' I knew. I knew this for Eminem.

I don't care what anybody says, there's nothing like the cultural influence of hip-hop. For me, hip-hop culture is involved in everything - it's in me, in who I am, in how I dress, how I talk. It's in my son and my wife.

Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years. It's a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment.

I think my Latino culture has equipped me with a different point of view than the rest of my counterparts, and seeing things from a different angle has helped me a lot. I feel very proud of my culture, of my Latino heritage.

When I started making music, I was so heavy into the hyphy movement. That's something you only know so much about if you were right there living in it, submerged in the culture.

7 Mile is like an Ave. Back in the days it was poppin' in the summer time.

Detroit is right now a new Mecca for Hip Hop.

New York is a great place to be fed in the arts. The arts in general are a large part of my life. The city was my postgraduate course.

Hip-hop is a cultural expression - it's embracing.

As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.

I'm a New Yorker, you know.

The working-class black Southern Christian culture I come from still nurtures me, and I mean directly, daily.

I have been aware since my youth that I am a Hebrew through my mother, and that is something that has played a subtle but important role in my development.

My life was very Japanese.

'Kiss Land' is the story after 'Trilogy'; it's pretty much the second chapter of my life. The narrative takes place after my first flight; it's very foreign, very Asian-inspired. When people ask me, 'Why Japan?' I simply tell them it's the furthest I've ever been from home. It really is a different planet.

You can't live in Austin and escape the music.

We were from downtown, so we were rapping in Danceteria, in these white downtown clubs, really. Nobody downtown was rapping. Nobody we knew was rapping. So we were like, 'We should do it.' We weren't making fun of it; we loved it, and we wanted to be part of it.

You could not imitate Fellini. His beauty was above anything else, but that intelligence was typically Italian. This helped me to realise that I had to create something that was distinctively Japanese.

Atlanta, to me, has the sauce as far as urban music is concerned.

The Indian heritage plays a very important role in my career, I have always wanted my Indian roots to be with me. I was also influenced by the urban culture around me back in the day.

Even with my family, I feel sort of 'other.' I'm the only one of my siblings who wasn't born in Jamaica. For a long time, I didn't feel very connected to Jamaican culture, but because I was raised so heavily with that cultural influence, I realized that my inner monologue is a Jamaican woman.

I got 'Smooth' when I was growing up. I got 'Bigshot' playing in Detroit. People who know me from Denver call me 'Smooth.'

Growing up in a traditional environment, I was taught the importance of art, how it's connected to the soul, how it makes a human being. This made me understand and cherish American art forms.

I was born in Hip Hop. That's all I ever needed.

Oh, my other goal was that I wanted to talk about this area and this time in history. I wanted to talk about growing up in Oakland, a white kid, from this kind of generation of broken homes and listening to hip-hop.