Nas Quotes

There's been a progression in my sound.

I still love old-school hip-hop, but there hasn't been a lot that I've taken from the new stuff.

I feel like I'm doing something in Atlanta that nobody ever did as far as rap. If it happens to end up on the top 40 or the pop charts, it doesn't mean I meant to go pop. It's just where the music took me. It started at the bottom, and it rises.

I think there's always been progressive R&B music.

All genres of music have to evolve, grow, and expand in order to maintain. I don't think there's anything wrong with the growth of R&B. I welcome it.

I think people just have to realize that music grows, and hip-hop evolves. I mean, everything evolves.

Trap is new. It didn't start yesterday, but when I was 5, it didn't exist - not even in the U.S. I've evolved with the music.

Hip-hop has always been evolving.

I'm not in that state of mind that I was back in '86 - hip-hop is not in that state of mind that it was back in '86. Times change. I change.

Every time you ask yourself where hip-hop's going, ask yourself where you're going; how are you doing?

Hip-hop has permeated pop culture for decades. For a long time, though, it seemed to permeate it in a such a way that it never really got its just due. Now, hip-hop seems to be getting that recognition and is more widely accepted, which is great.

I get upset when people knock hip-hop, because I can absolutely see the musicality in it. These days, when I'm listening to records by hip-hop artists, I hear the production. It's just astounding how great the productions have become.

Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn't go the way of jazz.

All music now is influenced by Hip Hop. It's so deeply ingrained in the culture.

I don't believe it is more important to move forward than to know the truth.

It's like hip hop all over again, back in the '70s back in the Bronx, when it was just bubbling. But it's going to be huge.

There was so much good and different music back then and you'd just keep moving through it and discovering more new stuff. I went through my Black Sabbath phase before I even started playing guitar.

I have gone through many difference phases in my love affair with hip-hop.It evolves, your taste. It sometimes deepens, in terms of what's out; sometimes it's not as deep in terms of what's out. So it's definitely an evolution. I don't ever claim to be a hip-hop head.

One day in Berlin ... Eno came running in and said, 'I have heard the sound of the future.' ... he puts on 'I Feel Love', by Donna Summer ... He said, 'This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.' Which was more or less right.

Hip-hop is always moving. It's always looking for the next style; it's always trying to one-up the last person.

I think what's made electronic music so fascinating is that it came up through the underground and always moved and pivoted so quickly that you could never keep a handle on it. That continues to happen. Sure, the stuff on the very top moves slower and is marketed for Spotify. But there are still going to be undercurrents that flow freely and move around, simply because there's too much of a base with this music.

I think that the revolution in music is over, and what's left is a mop-up action. It's a matter of the news getting out to everybody else. I think that the important changes have already happened, changes in consciousness. It's mostly a matter of everything else catching up to that. Everything is traditionally slow - much faster than it ever has been on earth but still far, far too slow.

Hip-hop has been so important in my work, because it speaks to the idea of money being tied to cultural capital in an honest and transparent way. When I was growing up in LA, money was equivalent to class, and it was a passport. Hip-hop emphasizes that, but Hollywood and show business bear it out. If you have money, there really is no barrier to social mobility. There are still social clubs in Newport where you can't get in even if you have money, but that is really rare.

In the finished article, the only thing that is important is whether it moves you or not. There is nothing else that is important at all.

If I weren't making music, I'd be the kid who writes into the magazines and says, "why don't you guys ever cover anything that's different? Hip hop is so much of the same thing over and over again." I love hip hop, so I wanted to make an album from that standpoint, 'cause that's who I am.