Rakim Quotes

You make music to change the radio, not make music for the radio.

Rappers should just be able to perform what they create and satisfy the people that like and love them.

All we ever wanted was for Tupac to have the opportunity to tell his story.

I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time. The people who are in charge of what people see or hear are afraid. What you hear on top 40 or what you see on BET or MTV is not a fair representation of what is really going on...

For a while, the genre seemed to be just about sex and crime. Rappers are storytellers; the stories don't need to be true!

I know that I'm freer as a hip-hopper than as an executive. Even as a black man, I enjoy more freedom as a hip-hopper than as a black man. That, s controversial to say, but it's the truth.

I think that people have been claiming hip-hop as being dead since the moment it started. I think there are people - and I can be included in that category sometimes - that get frustrated feeling like maybe the industry has handcuffed itself, or trained its artists to do or think about music in a way that classically hasn't led to the greatest records in hip-hop.

You have to think outside the box. The world is changing every day, the music industry is so different but I think the more creative you are the better.

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

I think the world is changing and all that matters is that I'm creating things.

I think something happens with age. And I find this really a lot in what I read from certain art critics: For people who are all about change-people who are supposed to be intellectually and culturally drawn to the idea of change and how the voice of a creative person affects the world on a bigger scale than just the canvas-I would expect a person in that position to have that open mind. It's only a sign of age that they become so locked in their own rules that they forget that this is what it's all about.

To me, it's an honour to be accepted as a hip hop artist, it gives me a lot of opportunity to express myself.

We culture. Rap is the new rock 'n roll. We the rockstars. It's been like that for a minute, Hedi Slimane!

I'm envious of the way that electronic dance music has organised itself. It has been able to understand what it ain't rather than what it is. And I think that slipped away from hip-hop as soon as the DJs lost the majority of the say so in the direction of the music.

I spent 80% of my time working on this, and 20% of my time working on music. Why do you think the song 'Niggas in Paris' is called 'Niggas in Paris?' 'Cause niggas was in Paris!

I think it's worthwhile to expand your comfort level and just do something awful. I wasn't trying to make music for money.

I think always my interest in making movies is to have something really technical mixed with something that was not so formal...something free.

Hip-Hop is my vehicle to scientific and universal enlightenment

Before I think we was emcees, we was more or less narrators too. Because if you look at the early '80s hip hop, it was so much creativity goin' on with artists like then, like Slick Rick, then you had Rakim, and you had these different kind of artists back then. And we was a marble cake of all these artists. So I didn't have a problem with writin' stories because I felt like that was somethin' I loved to do. Even to this day, I really consider myself an entertainer-slash-narrator. I like to talk about stuff that goes on.

The thing about hip-hop is they always want to classify you as one particular artist, but hip-hop is about going outside the box and expressing yourself however you want to.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or "what you're doing isn't jazz," are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly. It's the people who are talented enough and who have the open mind and who are forward-thinkers are the ones who are doing something new. You tend to hate on what you can't produce.

The rap game has to save itself. Everybody's saving it. People like Lil Wayne is saving it. He's bringing energy to it.

Every age thinks it's the modern age, but this one really is. Electricity is going to change everything. Everything!

There were so many things associated with it in terms of music and fashion, and a different way of thinking that, for me, skateboarding represented so much of what I wanted to do with my life at an early age.

I can't think of anything more rewarding than being able to express yourself to others through painting. Exercising the imagination, experimenting with talents, being creative; these things, to me, are truly the windows to your soul.