The Weeknd Quotes

But I've been freestyling and messing around with rhyming since I was 13. That's when I really started listening to hip-hop music.

Hip-hop is all about impact, baby. You can sell records, you can be two-times platinum, you can be gold... but if you lame, you lame, man. We try to provide the exact opposite of that. It's style, individuality, confidence. We exude that.

Being a student of hip-hop in general, you take technical aspects from places. You may take a rhyme pattern or flow from Big Daddy Kane or Kool G Rap.

The MC that we love are usually the ones that we consider be kinda heartless, like 50 Cent. That's pretty much the prowess and power of an MC. That's what sells.

Pac get busy. People can't take nothing from him. On the lyrics, he get busy, straight up.

I was kind of influenced by the hip-hop culture.

There is some gangsta music I like, like Biggie Smalls - he reminds me of Slick Rick -doing the same thing, but he did it in a really artistic way.

There's a heavy hip-hop influence in my music, some trap influence, but it's always lyrical.

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

Rappers tend to use words sometimes that just rhyme and don't really mean nothing.

I feel like I changed hip-hop.

What sets 'Some Nights' apart from anything we've ever done is the hip-hop influence. Not so much the actual sound of hip-hop, but more the vibrato and the artistry that comes with it. Right now, the artists that seem to be pushing to be the greatest artists and are trying to change the world are hip-hop artists.

I mean, when it's time to rhyme rhyme, I can get down for mine.

I grew up listening to a lot of Snoop Dogg and the Wu-Tang Clan. Actually, I was a huge Wu-Tang fan.

I write poetry, and I put it to a beat - I mean, that's what they call rap.

Hip-hop deals with bragging and braggadocio, being boastful. It's always been about who's got the most money.

A lot of the hip hop artists don't write music. They write words.

I think that rap is narrative, when it's done right.

I came up in hip-hop, where people value the ability to tell it straight.

As I got older, I really got into Tupac's poetry, his books and just learning about his life and what he was into.

I'm pretty sure people thought I was like a dope rapper.

You know how a person is made for something? Eminem is made for hip-hop. The best rapper is a white man.

All rappers are princesses like me.

I loved hip-hop. The first stuff I heard was Public Enemy, and I couldn't believe it. It was amazing, and I've always loved hip-hop.

And to turn it into rap wasn't too difficult besides just rhymin' the last words of each line.