Zubin Mehta Quotes

N.W.A. were the first great rap audio documentarians of the problems in our inner cities.

Sometimes you almost have to laugh to keep from crying to deal with the pain associated with the 'hood.

I rap about Memphis and what a dangerous spot that is.

I love movies that make me cry, because they're tapping into a real emotion in me, and I always think afterwards: how did they do that?

Who gave it that title, gangsta rap? It's reality rap. It's about what's really going on.

I always felt that rap didn't cause crime; it just reflected it.

Hip hop is the strongest form of protest there is, and it doesn't always have to be a violent protest. It can be romantic, also. When you listen to Kanye West's 'Street Lights' for example, there's romance, there's pain - you feel the essence. I get the same thing from Drake and 2 Chainz.

If you're going to write about rap music and hip-hop, and you don't love it, then we don't need your opinion, and we revoke your opinion.

The things I rap about are 100 percent real. But at the same time, I don't rap about those things to tear my city down. I give you the reality of what it is and what I been through and how it is living in those conditions in Gary, Ind.

My favorite Eminem song is probably 'Lose Yourself' because I can relate to it a lot. That's how I feel every time I write a rhyme.

I'm going to make my own 'Trapped In The Closet' one day, about a black kid growing up in the hood.

Maino is an artist that I feel walks what he talks - you can tell what he raps about and what he's been through is very similar. You've got a lot of rappers that rap about what they've heard or seen, but I think Maino is one of the rappers that has actually lived it.

I just loved listening to hip-hop, I love the words. The angry words resonated with me.

It's important to love in hip hop.

I remember where I was when I first heard 'Boyz N The Hood' - 126th Street and Normandy, South Central, Los Angeles. I remember that I was on my porch. What they described in that song was so vivid and so clear to me because it was the kind of life I was used to witnessing and partly experiencing in my neighborhood.

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

When people hear my music, they ain't really hearing about no shiny stuff, the glamorous life. They're going to hear that gritty, slum.

Mobb Deep's music, we represent poverty. That's what made us. That's who made us. That's who brought us up.

I get an audience personally involved in a song - because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliberately: I can't help myself. If the song is a lament at the loss of love, I get an ache in my gut. I feel the loss myself and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel.

I think every generation has that movement of hip-hop that you know you're playing it and you definitely have that moment of like, "Why am I saying this so enthusiastically? Why am I so stoked and psyched to say these lyrics?"

I was born in Hip Hop. That's all I ever needed.

There is no music more powerful than hip-hop. No other music so purely demands an instant affirmative on such a global scale. When the beat drops, people nod their heads, “yes,” in the same way that they would in conversation with a loved one, a parent, professor, or minister.

I just want people to feel the emotion that's in the record. For me it's very raw and beautiful, I guess it's kind of like a diary for me. I'd love for people to be able to listen to it and it make them dance and cry and the same time.

I approach everything the same. I try to make it as real as possible, whether you gotta make people laugh or make people cry, it's always the same approach for me. But if I start doing pratfalls, somebody please pull the plug on me.