MC Hammer Quotes

I don't dislike rappers or hip-hop or people who like it. I went to the Def Jam tour in Manchester in the '80s when rap was inspirational. Public Enemy were awesome. But it's all about status and bling now, and it doesn't say anything to me.

It's really weird how the rock world is quickly becoming like the jazz world. How if you do OK, or get a tiny bit of success, that's considered a sellout, whether you did anything different or not.

In trying to cross over to the mainstream, some people stopped writing what they witnessed.

I don't want to be subsumed into popular culture and played on the radio next to some garbage music.

Becoming a commercial scene? I don't think people in grime would be happy about that.

There's bad in everything. I dislike people misusing something that I love so much. It goes beyond the money. It goes beyond all of that and the glory. I love what I've done and I just can't stand to see what they're doing to it. But I've learned to live with it because that's what they've done. They've come in with the modern sounds. I call it modern pop. It's not country anymore.

When white people wear baggy clothing and speak gibberish they're homeless, when black people wear baggy clothing and speak gibberish they're called rappers.

There are poor white people who hear rap music and feel it is about them, because it is. That's why you have an Eminem and a Bubba Sparxxx and rappers like that.

Which is the other reason hip-hop is controversial: People don't bother trying to get it. The problem isn't in the rap or the rapper or the culture. The problem is that so many people don't even know how to listen to the music.

What people who don't create don't understand, is that once you take money from the machine, the machine [movie industry] owns you.

I always knew I could rap, and in a sense I always rapped. And I've always behaved like a rapper. But I started to take it seriously when I recorded with the people of Brick when I started to receive some money.

I go out in the streets, and I go to shows, and I see my fans turn from "I like your last rap" to "I feel your movement; you're keeping it all the way real." One thing I've always said is that's never been my story, and I'm not going to go back on my word.

I rap when I'm rich. I rap when I'm broke. I rap when I'm bullshit in the street. I rap about only having one woman now. If you can look at a continuum of my career, it's been an evolution of a real dude. So when I say I take my wife to the strip club, we're there, at the five-dollar joint. More than anything, I want people to take away that I'm not mainstream act.

The counterculture is always repackaged and made into a product. It's part of America.

I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate. I thought, that's interesting, because I believe a total unwillingness to cooperate is what is necessary to be an artist — not for perverse reasons, but to protect your vision. The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. That's why I spend my time now painting.

Despite a lot of people thinking that everything gets more and more difficult, I always assumed that people are going to be "Oh, at last you buckled, you're trying to be commercial."

The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.

I think the biggest thing that people fear when it comes to art becoming a business is those authentic, pure aspirations of art being compromised.

What I want to do right now is give hip hop back to the hood. Before it was a neighborhood thing where it belonged to the hood and the rappers were reporting and there were rules and parameters. Now it seems like the artist's game.

I always felt, rather than play by the mainstream standards, we've always done what we do and the mainstream has finally decided to, like that but, we've only gotten more extreme so, the band hasn't got more commercial, it's just that more people understand where we're coming from so more people are in to it.

I think no matter what you do, a certain amount of people are going to call you a sellout, somehow, you know. If I ever start trying to make a living on it.

I've got a million people telling me why I can't do it. You know, that I'm not a real designer, that I'm not this. I'm not a real rapper, either!

I feel, am mad as any writer must in one way be; why not make it real? I am too close to the bourgeois society of suburbia: too close to people I know I must sever my self from them, or be a part of their world: this half and half compromise is intolerable.

At the end of the day, all you really have is your own sense of your artistic ability and I've always stuck with that my whole life. I guess there is always a bit of relief that I have and real joy of being able to engage other people who are talented, equally or better than you, and you can work with them.

They sought out rap music to attack, but you don't hear that anymore because it made too much money. They use Che Guevara to sell soft drinks. If something comes out that is radical and it's successful, then it's no longer radical. It's co-opted.