Gary Ross Quotes

I write a lot of rhymes, but I don't really end up using them a lot of times, and I end up just freestyling. I like to write music, though, more than I like to freestyle, to be honest.

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

When I first started making music, I was pretty drawn to hip-hop beats wrapped together with super-good lyrics. The most important thing in that is wordplay, so that stayed with me when I started writing songs.

In about seventh grade, that's when we started playing around with beats, rhymes.

Usually, my rhymes are just in my head. I start off with a theme, and once I start rapping and writing and singing, the chorus and all that, it just starts flowing. Then it's done in about an hour! I write a lot of songs.

Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.

I wrote my first song, 'Conversion', to this little hip-hop instrumental. I went to an open-mic, plugged my iPod into the P.A., and sang over the beat.

I'm trying to escape the shackles of a pen and a pad. I've sat in sessions with Jay-Z where he doesn't write anything down. He'll come up with the most incredible triple entendre, all in his head - it's amazing.

Beats are really inspiring. They always make me want to write something over them.

I feel like rap fit me better. I could hoop. I could have went and did that, but this is my lifestyle, my temperament, my mentality.

I can make rhymes. My style of writing is kind of childlike anyway.

I'm not Tupac or this prophetic dude or anything like that. I just want to make music and have fun.

I've written a couple raps in my day, in my own music career, that people don't know a lot about.

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

MCs are authors, and rock musicians who write lyrics are authors, to a degree.

I think of myself as a reporter. I just rhyme my reports and give them a beat.

I wanted to be a poet. I fell in love with poetry around eight years old, but not through literature. Instead, it came through hip-hop lyrics and my obsession with reading liner notes. Queen Latifah's 'Black Reign' is the album that stands out the most.

When I was in fourth grade, I started writing a lot of poetry, and eventually, someone in the church was like, 'You should switch this over to rapping.' I went home and did that - started putting my poems over 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.

I saw I could rhyme words. It came simply to me. But I wrote some pretty horrible songs that I still have on tape.

It was a little at a time but I broke out my Walkman and my lyric pad and started writing.

Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.

I don't have to work on it. I'm naturally a writer. The rapping and writing, they can go hand-in-hand - but rapping is an art that you have to practice and master, so I worked at it for a long time.

I really wanted to work hard on my lyrics.

I actually find a lot of pleasure in writing lyrics.