Rakim Quotes

Eminem is like the godfather of the hip-hop game.

I didn't grow up around all white people; I never wanted to gentrify hip-hop, I've never wanted to speak to an all-white audience.

I still gotta reacquaint myself with the hip-hop audience.

Sometimes you have the trends that's not that cool. You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don't really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after awhile. It's really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it.

I think hip-hop could help rebuild America, once hip-hoppers own hip-hop... We are our own politicians, our own government, we have something to say. We're warriors. Soldiers.

I would do a documentary about Jay-Z. Yes, I would.

I got no problem with Nas.

Rap was started by black people and, thus, is at the foundation of black culture. So people cannot always wrap their minds around someone like me being inspired by it. But if you listen to the things we're saying, they're authentically us.

I think Ye is important to hip-hop.

I listen to a lot of Biggie, he's so lyrical.

I think people were genuinely addicted to hip hop in the 90s, addicted to the idea of empowerment. I think it came from [the fact that] the rappers in the 90s, their parents coming from the 70s, had such a rich variety of records to sample.

I think Lil Wayne is definitely a dope rapper.

For a while, the genre seemed to be just about sex and crime. Rappers are storytellers; the stories don't need to be true!

I got a liberal education. A white guy, rapping as Bugs Bunny, on a quintuple-platinum album.

There are so many rappers now that it's cluttering our culture. 90% of the time at a show there are more artists in the crowd than there are fans - it's too much. Too many people try to give you CD's.

When I started emceein', you had 500 maybe 1000 rappers in the whole world. Now there's 1.000.000, nahmean?

There's a machine that I have nothing to do with. It's called the "Tupac Machine."

I think that people have been claiming hip-hop as being dead since the moment it started. I think there are people - and I can be included in that category sometimes - that get frustrated feeling like maybe the industry has handcuffed itself, or trained its artists to do or think about music in a way that classically hasn't led to the greatest records in hip-hop.

What a lot of people don't know is that Wyclef started off as a battle rapper, when he decided that he would rhyme.

There have been a lot of hip-hop artists who have made a difference to people's lives, spreading the message of the struggle and representing for those who have overcome adversity.

It's hard being a white rapper sometimes! When that happens you just need to battle through.

Hopefully the rappers can start to open the eyes in the neighborhoods and communities.

Well, we have to realize the truth about the person who is a hip-hop insider. Most of these people are not really insiders. They are people who are chosen to do an interview and they will make a statement and say that they are a part of the hip-hop culture, but from an intellectual standpoint, they are not very sharp, because back in '1990..'91 one would criticize somebody for doing one type of commercial and say that's not real hip-hop and then another rapper turns around and sell them malt liquor and say that's real hip hop.

Being a black rapper is like being a Southern, socialite woman: You're always worried about appearances.

Nobody's gonna be bigger than Eminem.