Nas Quotes

If you asked me what pop is right now. I'd say hip hop.

I'm not hip-hop. I'm Tyler.

I really love hip hop. My cousin Nas came out with an album 'Life Is Good,' and I love that album, but I also love Maroon 5.

Hip-hop is a way of life. It isn't a genre in truth in 'American Idol.'

For us to keep claiming this isn't Hip Hop and that isn't Hip Hop doesn't make sense to me.

Jay-Z, for a lot of reasons, will always be my favorite. But actually, in terms of what I listen to, it bends towards hip-hop, but I like everything. The only thing I don't really love is country, but everything else I'm a huge fan of.

The mission of '8 Mile' is essentially to garner sympathy for a white rapper involved in an old-school shootout - a rap contest. This may be the final frontier for pop, more unbelievable than the prospect of launching a member of 'N Sync into orbit.

Hip-hop is rock & roll. What the hell is Wu-Tang but Motorhead?

I despise hip hop. Loathe it. Eminem is an idiot and I find 50 Cent the most distasteful character I have ever crossed in my life. Eminem's new song about his kid - isn't it the most ridiculous piece of music you have ever heard in your life? I just don't like the dragging women around on dog leads and all that stuff

I really like the song "Only One" [ Kanye West with Paul McCartney].

I spent 80% of my time working on this, and 20% of my time working on music. Why do you think the song 'Niggas in Paris' is called 'Niggas in Paris?' 'Cause niggas was in Paris!

I'm more into beats than rhymes.

I would consider my music like, pop-R&B. So it can reach a lot of people. Pop is popular music. That's what it stands for. So I'm just making music that I know that I like, I know other people will like, and my fans will like.

Hip-hop is such an amazing thing that kids still want to do it. They're not saying, "Ugh, that's the old people's music." No, they're younger than they've ever been that want to get into hip-hop music.

I grew up in the Bronx. I'm into rap music.

When I was about 13 or 14. I was in a Kingston Trio type group. We evolved into the New Breed. Our first song on the radio was "Green Eyed Woman," not to be confused with "Green Eyed Lady".

I'm really attracted to music that sort of toes that line between pop and avant-garde, that pushes the envelope of what you can get in a pop song.

The first rap album I bought was Eminem's The Slim Shady LP so I wasn't even based on West Coast rap like that.

Slade was never pretentious. It was just music to them. Pop, rock, soul....it was all the same to Slade. They wrote great songs. And, besides, I'd like to raid their wardrobe.

The thing about hip-hop is they always want to classify you as one particular artist, but hip-hop is about going outside the box and expressing yourself however you want to.

To be honest, that whole exchange with Crunk Feminist actually made me write the song because I realize there's a lot of young women out there so hurt by the misogynistic images in hip-hop they paint it with such a broad brush stroke that they think anybody that defends hip-hop is defending misogyny.

When you a young kid at that age at that time, and you know that you got talent as far as hip hop, you wanna be on the radio, that's the first thing. So we was more or less infatuated with just havin' a song on the radio, you know? Before our careers even launched it was more or less about lettin' everybody know, 'Staten Island? You got good emcees there.'

I liked hip-hop, wanted to do rap, and wanted to stand on a large stage. If you look at it in another angle... it's something that I chose.

If you only ever heard "Valley Girl," or "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow," or a song that has a comedic narrative, you would get some impression that that was novelty music, but that's the only stuff that ever got on the radio. You can make the argument that that's what has confused generations as to what his music's about.

Hip Hop has introduced us to a lot of genres that we probably wouldn't even listen to in our own homes from our parents.