Brett Gelman Quotes

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

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.

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

Look at music: I've always loved hiphop and rap, and now there's this whole progressive movement, with De La Soul and Mos Def, Common. It's some of the best stuff around.

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

I loved writing lyrics for rap when I was in junior high. I loved studying, but somehow I wanted to be a rapper who can write and rap.

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

Our style of hip-hop, our style of beats, our style of rhymes - you gonna give us burn. We gonna get our burn that we deserve.

To me, rapping is an art.

The rap scene is so unique. Every rapper has to bring their own thing.

Everyone has the notion that hip-hop is messy and loose, but there's also another level to it.

I'm a musician. I play instruments. I dabble in the hip-hop field. That doesn't take vocal ability necessarily.

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

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.

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.

Big Rube was on my first album and some of my mixtapes. His words are so powerful. I want to speak every word he says into existence. I wanna be a part of that! I wanna be a part of greatness. His wordplay is great to me.

My son is a hip-hop producer.

I've been trying to nail it into everyone's heads that I feel like I am the most versatile rapper.

This is hip-hop. If you've got something you want to rap about, just rap about it, man.

When I'm not in the booth, I'm one of the most laid-back guys. But growing up, I liked DMX, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and T.I. - dudes that went all out on the track. My first songs were energetic because I liked their energy.

I was a rapper and a DJ, and if you wanted to be involved in hip-hop, you had to be involved in the sonic, the kinetic and the visual aspects. The visual was graffiti.

I listen a lot to rap, and I'm inspired to take it, to use it in another way, to get the message across.

Rapping was something I always wanted to do, so after school, my friends and I would catch the bus to my house and just sit there writing songs, every day.

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