Q-Tip Quotes

There were uncles in my life that definitely knew the street life.

Just growing up in Harlem, it didn't matter what you had to do to get fresh - you would do it.

I'm from the streets of New York. I know what tough talk sounds like.

I was very much a tough New York street kid. I went to a school where you had to learn how to get along with everybody or fight with everybody, and I did my fair share of both.

In the hip-hop community, it's about how real are you, or how strong can you be, and really my music just reflects me. If you can accept me, then you can accept my music.

Hip-hop deals with bragging and braggadocio, being boastful. It's always been about who's got the most money.

Hip-hop is a voice for voiceless poor people.

At 19, I was in the streets making money. I was surviving.

One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility.'

But I had two very special people who helped to take my style to the next level. Thank God for my first MC Cowboy and my first student Grand Wizard Theodore, and to go out after creating this art form and finding everyone jamming to it - that too was pretty scary.

Growing up in the streets of Bed-Stuy, it was hard, yo.

They keep the song as street as it needs to be. It's got a good catchy hook where it can do what it needs to do on the radio, but they keep the song street where it will keep credibility in the hood.

My style is black. It's hip-hop. It's who I am.

You know who we hear about all the rappers from? The bus drivers.

I came from a real tough neighborhood. I put my hand in some cement and felt another hand.

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 see N.Y. hip-hop like I see N.Y. streets. N.Y. streets are grimy; it's a grind. N.Y. rappers are hustlers - whatever sound is in, we can adapt to that; there's nothing wrong with that.

Rap is from the streets and I'm from the streets. That's why a lot of people accept me.

It was a strike against me that I didn't wear baggy jeans and jerseys and that I never hustled, never sold drugs.

I am hip-hop!

I used to be the class clown. I was the funny kid. That's why it was so hard for people to understand that I rap, because for a long time, they didn't take me seriously for who I was. By, like, eighth grade, I was really rapping.

I actually met The Game in my hood on Crenshaw and Slauson. I was outside on the block with 20 of my homies. I see the Range Rover, and we all walked up to his car. I handed him my CD.

Oakland, by far, is really gorgeous; it still has these pockets that are really dangerous. Certain things are kind of normal. I think kids out there can be tested in a way where his right of passage ties into a bit of violence and how that has become these markers in masculinity and you being kind of validated after having to pass through things.

Mobb Deep is a street-rap group. We from off the streets.

Rappers are the white authors of our generation. They know me, my language, my codes, my family, my block.