Danny Brown Quotes

I've always been jealous of rappers, because they can fit so many words into a song and tell a story with lots of details. But when you're a songwriter, you have to fit the words to the melody and you can't fit as much in. I'm just a big fan of storytelling.

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.

I was never just a 'fill in 16 bars on a beat' rapper. I was making real songs from the jump.

I'm not a fast, stream-of-consciousness lyricist at all - I know some guys who are, and if there is one skill I wish I had, it's that.

I'm not tryin' to come off as the best lyricist.

I've been known to drop a spoken-word bit into a song from time to time. But not straight-up rap. I don't know that I have that gift.

I feel like with a lot of Madlib's beats, they are made for storytelling. I feel like when I'm working on stuff with him, I can really get into the storytelling aspect mode of my flow.

I'm really big into lyrics in my own songs, so I look up to Drake in that aspect.

I've worked really, really hard on my lyricism.

My own rapping skills are quite good, actually. You get this thing, I think it's called Songify or AutoRap, and you talk into them, and they auto-tune it and make it into a quite interesting musical number. And I got one where it builds it into a rap.

I think rap music is rap music. I mean, are there heavy writing aspects of it? Absolutely. In a sense, is it poetry? Yeah. I've heard that so much, growing up in a house with poetry. But I think people like to use that as a shortcut for who's good and who's not. It's like the word 'lyrical' - 'lyrical' is the worst word in the entire world.

I don't sing melodically. Rhyme pattern is how I sing. I also write like a lyricist or an MC because that's what I was before I was a singer. I just took those elements and put them into music.

Being able to say something lyrically, to say something that will do more than just be words, is really hard. It's easy to do when you're writing a chapter of a book or writing poetry, but it's really hard to do when you're confined to a melody line.

You don't have to be a good singer any more if you can rap well.

Hunter can write a melody and stuff like that, but his forte is lyrics. He can write a serviceable melody to hang his lyrics on, and sometimes he comes up with something really nice.

Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure.

Hip-hop is not all '2 Chainz' - although '2 Chainz' is awesome. How he does that with metaphors, I don't know.

I think to be a good songwriter, you have to be able to play an instrument.

It takes a certain type of rapper for me to really get into the album.

When I found Freestyle Fellowship, I started getting into the construction of rap. You get better at it the more you do it; you figure out the science and the math behind it.

Some MCs don't take the time to take a beat home or just vibe with it and just figure out, 'How do I attack this track?'

Rap - it's a childhood passion. Writing rhymes, it's something that I was doing before rap records even existed. And I will continue to write until I can't write anymore.

I freestyled the hook to 'Target.' I got into cadence and then it sparked the idea.

You hear what Thug says in his songs - the musical level of it is so crazy that it doesn't register with some people, so they call it trash. But anybody who loves music can appreciate what he's doing.

I say if you don't write your lyrics, then you can't be the best rapper alive. Not at all. You can be one of the best artists, especially in rap, you gotta write everything yourself.