Michael Dyson Quotes

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.

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride.

I don't know that there is a, quote, 'hip-hop lifestyle.' I think the music responds to complex social issues and injustices; I think it also raises complex social questions.

If you think about it, hip-hop came out of nothing. It was a response to oppression.

When I say 'hip-hop is dead,' basically, America is dead. There is no political voice. Music is dead.

Like some of my other movies, 'Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes' is also a very political film, and many critics still consider it even the best of all the Apes movies, because it conveys a series of political viewpoints.

Hip Hop emerged fearlessly and unappoligeticly reflecting our society.

I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities.

Hip-hop has always been speaking about the way your brain is manipulated by stress and struggle because hip-hop is borne from struggle.

I come from Eastside Buffalo and prison cells. That's the beauty about hip-hop. It just brings everybody together.

I like the way hip-hop is now. It's grown up enough so that it can get involved with politics if it feels like it.

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.

I am often asked why I started to write poetry. The answer is that my motivation sprang from a visceral need to creatively articulate the experiences of the black youth of my generation, coming of age in a racist society.

I've often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.

Public Enemy is the security of the hip-hop party.

Hip-hop has globalized a conception of blackness that has had a political impact, whether or not it had a political intent.

I was well known to African Americans before Bill Clinton discovered me. He was like Christopher Columbus riding up on something he didn't understand.

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

Hip-hop's always reached out to kids. If you look at the last 10 big albums it might seem ironic. But when I look at the history of this music it's always had a lot of positivity.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

Bob Marley performed the 'One Love Peace' concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There's always been that in black music and culture in general. It's no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what's going on in black life. It's not unusual for hip-hop.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar.

It's interesting that we assign the label 'political' to art that doesn't just fit a mould of status quo. Is 'Downton Abbey' not political? That's political! Every piece of art offers a perspective on the world. And what is politics if not a perspective on the world? 'Downton Abbey' is about class. It's also about race.

For all of the diversity in 'Scandal,' no one else would be sitting in a room wearing a T-shirt and chains and call a Southern white Republican president a 'boy.' And it's those kinds of things that Rowan has the freedom to say that nobody else could say within the confines of the show.