Alicia Keys Quotes

If the KKK was smart enough, they would've created gangsta rap because it's such a caricature of black culture and black masculinity.

As long as there's a demand for gangsta rap, it will be supplied.

For a long period of time, the media covered rap music and hip hop the same way they cover a lot of black people, people of color, you know, the bad news happens to be news. They used to have these little stupid colloquialisms that pop up like, "You know what? No news is bad news!" They trick the masses into thinking that any news is great for you. And I just think that's a piece of crap.

Hip-hop has done more damage to black and brown people than racism in the last 10 years.

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale.

Since anti-racist individuals did not control mass media, the media became the primary tool that would be used and is still used to convince black viewers, and everyone else, of black inferiority.

The real violence is committed in the writing of history, the records of the legal system, the reporting of news, through the manipulation of social contracts, and the control of information.

People are so confused about race and hip-hop that people didn't even consider the Beastie Boys one of the greatest rap groups of all time because they were white.

Everybody in the '80s, well, we hate rap. Now, the biggest rapper in the world... Eminem. Rap's a black thing.

Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture.

A lot of people bit into Timbaland's sounds.

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.

The most political decision you make is where you direct people's eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political...And the most politically indoctrinating thing you can do to a human being is to show him, every day, that there can be no change.

Politicians are propaganda, the people with guns are the enforcers and the media is the enthusiastic lapdog who enables the entire behavior and acts as the verbal abuser against those who deviate from nodding their heads at the vast statues of evil that we inherited.

There is a terrific apprehension among some people that blacks will take over the sport... It will create problems because their behavior, speech and dress is just a completely different culture.

I hate to get on the racial thing because that's something I've always been totally against. But the problem with the media is that they think that the word rock means white and the word rap means black.

Black people watch more television than anybody else, which makes it legitimate to talk about television. Its anesthetizing effect has been quite real. But that concern isn't new.

Historically, you've had really muddy, unforgiving, unintentional images of black people.

So what you do [under apartheid system] is you convince black people that the reason they are being oppressed is because there are some within their community who just can't behave. And if only they could behave, then everyone else would have more freedoms and liberties, which, of course, is not true.

The poor black people in it make the black people in Gone With the Wind look like Malcolm X.

It is very depressing to see that in the 21st century people are still using the same 1950s and '60s style of propaganda.

There's a secret government out here. It's been functioning since the beginning of time, and their whole job is population control. A lot of it is racist, so their target black people and minorities. People need to watch out for that, pay attention to how they're tryin' to change laws, and they're tryin' to control the world. They don't want just America or Europe any more; they want the entire globe.