Aja Brown Quotes

Hip-hop is supposed to uplift and create, to educate people on a larger level and to make a change.

Kendrick Lamar is from Compton, but his Compton and how he expresses that is completely different than NWA and Eazy-E even though they were from the same environment.

I definitely believe that art is the best way to produce social change.

When you look at a guy like a Jay-Z or look at a guy like a Nas, you don't necessarily qualify them as conscious rap purely, although they are extremely conscious of the social inequities that prevail.

I think that art is still a site for resistance and for the telling of various stories, for validating certain subjectivities we normally overlook. I'm trying to be affective, to suggest changes, and to resist what I feel are the tyrannies of social life on a certain level.

If you see something is going wrong within politics and the world today, then some Hip Hop artist is gonna come along and get straight with it. If they think that there's a lot of racism going on then there's another Hip Hop artist who's gonna come out and speak their mind.

I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

Wherever I go, I bring the culture with me, so that they can understand that it's attainable. I didn't do it any other way than through hip-hop.

There is nobody on this planet who was ever liberated by an athlete or an entertainer.

Your cities can be saved or squandered in one generation. So let's agree to set aside our philosophical disagreements and focus on those aspirations that unite us. Let's grasp the opportunity that is presented by innovation to build better communities for our neighbors. Let's replace a focus on partisan division with a focus on results. That is the path to a better future for us all.

All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.

I think Tupac was more someone who was trying to inform us about what was going on, and he did it through entertainment.

Revolution is Tupac showing a young artist that he can scribble in a notebook and it's worth a lot.

I think at some point there may be artists who will get fed up, and they deliberately want to use their art as a means to rock the waves a little bit. And instead of doing the status quo, they'll deliberately go out to really make a change. I think Kendrick Lamar is an example of that.

That's what I wanted 'Pirate Jenny' to be: a queer, revolutionary fairy tale for the people that I love.

Hip-hop is substance. It's social. It's science - that's what it started off as. We have fun, and we still having fun; ain't nothing wrong with fun, but we need that social, we need that substance, we need that science, and we need that spiritual.

The great thing about 'Hamilton,' for me, is so many people have been exposed to and are more open to hip-hop and certain artists, despite the stigma that had before been attached to it.

I don't like political rappers.

The perpetuation of gangster rap has really put a negative image on the city of Compton... So I look forward to addressing that image, changing it and making it more accurate.

Until black culture as a whole is effectively disentangled from the python-grip of hip-hop, and by extension the street, we are not going to see any real progress.

When I'm in the studio with other rappers, we talk about social issues.

Thank you to Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Universal Studios, and the Grammys for telling the story of what Compton was and is becoming.

I love talking about the challenges [Newark, NJ] has because of the way they are always brilliantly disguised as opportunities.. .the biggest global challenge that there is is a challenge of the spirit, a challenge of our vision, a challenge and a test of our ideals, of who we SAY we are GOING TO BE.

Hip-Hop is bigger than the government.