Rakim Quotes

When you talk about rap you have to understand that rap is part of the Hip-Hop culture.

If I'm speaking to the streets and for the streets, they gon' respond. I don't even be thinking about blowing up.

One of the great things about rap music... it leaves a lot to be desired, as far as I'm concerned, musically, but I do recognize the very important place that it has in music and in creating role models for younger kids to emulate, giving them the dream that they can make it out of whatever situation they're in.

This is the industry that wants [music], the rap industry.

Hip-hop culture is deeply rooted in the wrong things. Hip-hop is about drugs right now. It's more so about drugs - about selling drugs, about using drugs - it's bad for kids.

When I leave I always come right back here. The young spitter that everybody in rap fear.

I put Compton on the map.

I never felt like 'I'm an underground dude' or 'I can only be hot in New York.'

If we're evaluating cool to the way other rappers appear to be cool, then I'm not cool at all.

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

All the other rappers around me aren't saying anything worthwhile. They're lost in rap: all they do is tell you they're a sick MC and they're better than you. I don't want to look like all these other little punk, dress-up, fake, manufactured artists. I'm not a rapper. I'm an activist.

You see how powerful some of the things you say and you do can be on people, especially young people.

I am not a rapper. And I believe people in India are not even clear with the whole idea of rap or what it signifies.

I had a lot of respect for Prodigy. He brought the hood to the booth. When we were trying to shape this rap thing into something, he was one of the cats I respected for bringing the hood into the booth.

I was, like, in a rap gang. I loved rap, and it was all around me.

This is more in regards to celebrities. What we've got to understand is that we are the influencers of the hip-hop culture, the black culture. We are the way out, you feel what I'm sayin'? As far as who we look to and where we get stuff from - hip-hop culture is influencing the world, really, but especially the black communities.

Everybody knows with rap artists, if you can't go to the hood, it's almost like you're not authentic, even if you're a dope artist that's respected.

Our music attracts the people that we rap about and make music about, and they come out and actually do it.

The funniest thing in the world to me is the idea of a white guy in his thirties going, 'Wait - I'm going to go into hip-hop.'

There are poor white people who hear rap music and feel it is about them, because it is. That's why you have an Eminem and a Bubba Sparxxx and rappers like that.

If you think about rap and how it has become so much easier to record music and release it, and you think about everyone in the world being a 'rapper' these days, it's so much easier. But it's still as hard as ever to break through and truly be successful in this industry.

I rap when I'm rich. I rap when I'm broke. I rap when I'm bullshit in the street. I rap about only having one woman now. If you can look at a continuum of my career, it's been an evolution of a real dude. So when I say I take my wife to the strip club, we're there, at the five-dollar joint. More than anything, I want people to take away that I'm not mainstream act.

For a long time I heard rap without paying attention, but it is still a way of life, even when you're a kid.

I just feel like I aint never did nothing foul in the game. My ghetto report card has always been straight A's across the board. So I said let me go ahead and name this "My Ghetto Report Card," and I'm touching down on all 4 angles of the game you smell me? I'm touching it from all basis. The album aint banana's, it's coconuts.

I've always been a fan of music. I would say I'm a fan of late '90s to early 2000s rap. That's where I get all my inspiration from.