Rakim Quotes

When I still lived in Manhattan, people-watching was my hobby, and I spent many Sunday afternoons eating up the scene from a window seat at a Starbucks on Broadway.

The thing about New York is, more than any other place I've ever been, you run into people on the street that you would never imagine you'd see, old friends, people just like there for a day or two. I find that all the time when I'm walking around Manhattan, running into people that I had no idea were even there.

I go down the street thinking, 'Oh my God, I live in New York.' But then I think, 'Oh my God, I'm on Broadway!'

If you stand still in any city long enough, you see everyone pass you by. So you're in Chicago. If you stand on the corner of Belmont and Clark, and you do that for three years, you'll pretty much have seen everybody in Chicago pass that junction.

I try to remember what it was like to be a kid in New York. I lived in different parts of my childhood in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, where 'When You Reach Me' is set, and also in the Midwood section of Brooklyn.

Being in New York City is the best because I'm always walking, taking the subway and walking up and down the stairs - whether you like it or not, you're going to get exercise.

But one sets of grandparents lived on Davidson Avenue in the Bronx and one lived in Manhattan and I had an aunt and uncle in Queens, so in my heart I was a New Yorker.

There was a sense of all the things that go on on the street, particularly in New York, that you are just completely unaware of, that that conversation could be happening at any time. I loved the instability of the camera. It's just an unstable world.

Growing up in Boston and dancing in the streets, you see a lot of things.

I'm obsessed with New York. I want to marry it, maybe bear a few children with 42nd Street.

My favorite elements of 'Start Talkin'' were those man-on-the-street pieces. I love shooting those. I was born in Manhattan, have lived in or around New York my entire life, and I feel like I'm in my element when doing those pieces.

I plan on getting out there and mixing with the crowd. I want to show everyone what happens in Times Square not from a distance, but from right there in the crowd.

I spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.

I think that hip-hop is more of an individual effort. That means you're an artist from the streets, they expect you to rap about the streets, because that's what happens there.

The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany.

Niggas is decaf, I stick 'em for the C.R.E.A.M.

I like to walk around Manhattan, catching glimpses of its wild life, the pigeons and cats and girls.

New York walking isn't exercise: it's a continually showing make-your-own movie.

Cities - I'm attracted to them, and I have a special attachment to New York...it's my place.

People had said to me New York is kind of cutthroat and people walk past you on the street. I find it the opposite. I find that people want to talk.

I want there to be a life for the street element. Instead of we always getting shut out. Instead of defenseless, having power.

A trap lord is basically the lord of the trap, and my trap is rap.

I always wanted to experience the street life because my teenage life in Aberdeen was so boring. But I was never really independent enough to do it. I applied for food stamps, lived under the bridge, and built a fort at the cedar mill.

Cruise the diamond district with my biscuit.

Before rap came along, I was, actually, actively in the streets; getting in trouble, doing the wrong thing.