Rakim Quotes

If you want to relate me to the newer cats, let's go. Let's go line for line and bar for bar. If it's all about spitting and metaphors and MCing and lyrics and entendres, I will eat 99 percent of you dudes up.

I have to be able to rap. I don't have the look. I don't have the typical slim-dude, fancy-clothes look. That's not me. I have to be able to rap - there is no other choice, or else I get eaten alive.

Longevity always come from lyricism. From the people who can actually rap.

But I still rap like I'm on my Pharoahe Monch grind.

If you're really a rapper, you can't stop rapping.

Rap is rhythm and poetry. Hip-hop is storytelling and poetry as well.

Common would come to my house and give me a freestyle verse. I'd make a new beat for it and put it with something else. That's how I met Eminem - he came to my house back when he first started. He gave me a bunch of freestyles, and that's how we built a relationship. Everyone came to my house.

I'm not completely at ease at rapping, I can't do it well yet.

I've been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I've been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.

I've been rapping since I was 13.

We all knew how talented K.Dot is. We knew how dope he was lyrically.

As far as rapping goes, as long as you are telling the truth and you have a good flow, then you win.

I had written rap songs in the early '90s and even did a couple homemade rap songs with my brother in like '88 or '89, but it was just like... I don't even know how to say it. Just plain rap. I was just rapping about whatever, there was no real style or direction, it was just semi-braggadocious rhymes that probably imitated 100 other rappers.

No one will ever be able to come against me on the beats.

Rap is very competitive. I just think I'm light years better than anybody.

When I was growing up, to be an emcee meant to write the most clever, intellectual, and wittiest rap. And that's what we did.

I got a close friend who raps.

I learned to MC over drum 'n' bass music.

I could rap really good on accident. I talk tight and it just sounded... I don't know. It's just such a big genre for me. At the end of the day, rap is the language of the world.

Not anyone can rap to my beats.

I never knew anything about rapping.

I'm not the best rapper; I'm not trying to be the best rapper.

To me, rapping is an art.

When I first started rapping, I used to just jock Jay Z super hard. Back when I was like 14 and 15, it was, like, Jay Z, Ice Cube, and Lil Wayne.