AJ Tracey Quotes

As a black artist in America, you know, it is so segregated as far as the radio goes and how they position music on the radio.

I always give the example, if you turn on the radio today, black radio, Lenny Kravitz is not black. Bob Marley wasn't black: in the beginning, only white college stations played Bob Marley.

People are so confused about race and hip-hop that people didn't even consider the Beastie Boys one of the greatest rap groups of all time because they were white.

When we were doing shows in the mid-'90s, the audiences were 95% black. What's happened now is the gentrification of hip-hop. A lot of cities passed ordinances that made it hard for black audiences to gather in large groups. Clubs are more open to hip-hop now 'cause it's the same crowd that goes to rock shows.

I had written a tune called 'Shake, Rattle and Roll,' but the white stations refused to play it - they thought it was low-class black music. We thought what we needed was a new name. But a white disc jockey named Alan Freed laid on it, and he thought up the name 'rock n' roll.'

Europe is weird songs that would never make it in America.

I think celebrity culture and sexuality in pop music is really important, but I want there to be an alternative for people.

If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.

Everybody in the '80s, well, we hate rap. Now, the biggest rapper in the world... Eminem. Rap's a black thing.

A lot of white men in the music industry are promoting and participating in black culture in a way that is pretty careless. They want the currency of blackness, but they don't want the brunt that comes along with that.

I know a lot of people who enjoy rap music who aren't black. You can't just say it's black music. To segregate films the way Hollywood likes to segregate films, ultimately everyone loses.

Let's face it: there aren't a lot of black superheroes. So, in dealing with a black superhero, you're going to deal with ugly history and the beauty of history.

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.

As a black person on the outside, because there's so much black art and so much of black people's work circulating, so many people imitating what black people do, you would think that there'd be more black people on the business side. It didn't cross my mind that every label head, for the most part, is a white guy.

Music in the U.K. is not racialised in the same way as it is in the U.S. In the U.S.. it's more rigid and conservative. And white people in the U.K. have more close proximity with black people and people of colour in general.

Rhythm and blues used to be called race music. ... This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it.

I wrote 'The Hate U Give' as a short story while I was in college at a mostly white school in conservative Mississippi.

People always say, 'There are plenty of black country artists out there! There is Charley Pride! Darius Rucker!' That's all they can name. They don't understand what we go through, and a lot of people who are fans of traditional country music, as they call it, look at us and aren't going to say, 'Y'all like country music.'

Becoming a commercial scene? I don't think people in grime would be happy about that.

There was a time when radio stations wouldn't play Gaga's music because it was considered dance. Outside of live performances, the Internet became our primary tool to help people discover her music.

I feel like I don't fit in. There's not a lot of outlets for urban music, for black artists who don't have that crossover thing going early on.

I don't make music for the radio. And when I was being played on the radio a lot, I didn't.

I grew up in a largely black community during the '70s and '80s that scoffed at 'white' music. That music - folk, rock, some disco - was considered soulless, aberrant, just one more example of the Caucasian's desire to scream and yell and demand whatever their privilege and perpetual adolescence dictated they should demand.

People have said it's hypocritical for me to call myself a feminist and make the kind of music we are making, because we signed to a major in the U.K., and that system objectifies women. Or people have complained that I don't dance. But I like the idea that I can stomp around the stage if I want.

Think about how much fashion profits from black culture and how underrepresented we are in the industry. If you insist on using black celebrities to peddle your merchandise and add a cool factor to your front row, it is indecent to not care about the plights of that person's community.