apl.de.ap Quotes

I couldn't possibly have lived all the things that Ice-T on the records lived.

Curtis Curtis jackson..he's the fakest thug I ever did see

Hood films now are made by studios and have nothing to do with the reality they supposedly represent.

Just because a rapper is white, I don't feel the need to attack them.

I'm a small-time white kid trying to represent hip-hop. If a hip-hop artist comes up and beats me in a battle, who did they beat? A small-town white kid who ain't never been an MC, who ain't never done nothing. Now if an MC comes to battle and they get beat by a small-town white boy, that's MC suicide.

One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility.'

I got into hip hop from my uncle; he was always playing us Kool G Rap and Big Daddy Kane. He was a bad boy, and my mum was not really happy that I was hanging out with him.

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.

I turned a lot of people in white America - and not just white America, but middle-class America - into hip-hoppers, you know?

The problem is that rap is so often a caricature of its own image. Nobody comes to the table with the seriousness of the effect that it can have; nobody is prepared for that.

I got into an argument with someone because I said I think 2Pac will be regarded as a great poet. They said he was just a punk gangster. People said the same thing about Francois Villon, and he's now considered the best French Romantic poet of all time.

The vibe on 'Starboy' comes from that hip-hop culture of braggadocio, from Wu-Tang and 50 Cent, the kind of music I listened to as a kid.

I put Compton on the map.

Hip-hop is always what's the coolest, and people want to touch that. A lot of the Pop artists always want to get that stamp of approval and be down.

I remember Bumpy Knuckles came in wearing all mink everything and said, 'Yo, when I spit my verse, I gotta pull my guns out and aim them.' He was serious! I told him that I was going to duck in the event that those guns accidentally went off. He pulled out the twin glocks, spit his verse in one take and said, 'I've got a meeting to go to' and left!

Hey, you gotta love a gangsta girl. Even the suburban and preppy girls wanna be gangsta girls. That's the whole gimmick to it. Everybody wants to be a gangsta girl.

Before I got signed to Bad Boy, I grew up listening to Snoop and Tupac and my hood was all Tupac driven.

I think a lot of rappers limit themselves by doing the gangster movies and that's stereotypical for a rapper.

The funniest thing in the world to me is the idea of a white guy in his thirties going, 'Wait - I'm going to go into hip-hop.'

Hip-hop was a big part of my life growing up, especially West Coast gangster rap.

I feel like the D.C. streets just love Gucci Mane. He's like a hood pastor.

I originally got my name after a gun because the way I rap; a gangster gave me the name in 1988.

I just feel like I aint never did nothing foul in the game. My ghetto report card has always been straight A's across the board. So I said let me go ahead and name this "My Ghetto Report Card," and I'm touching down on all 4 angles of the game you smell me? I'm touching it from all basis. The album aint banana's, it's coconuts.

I ain't a thug - how much Tupac in you you got?

Everything I do is going to be gangsta rap, street based, street oriented... I'm from Gary, Indiana, and everybody's damn near at the poverty level.