Dizzee Rascal Quotes

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

I grew up listening to a lot of Snoop Dogg and the Wu-Tang Clan. Actually, I was a huge Wu-Tang fan.

Oh, my dad listens to a lot of 2Pac, Ice Cube and WC. That's what he was listening to a lot when we were growing up. He's always been a fan of hip-hop.

When I started getting into West Coast rap - The Game, then I started studying a lot of Tupac Shakur and watching his interviews.

As I got older, I really got into Tupac's poetry, his books and just learning about his life and what he was into.

You know, Tupac is very near and dear to my heart. He started my career as an actor.

I listened to Tupac and a lot of Biggie Smalls.

Tupac was real and honest about every question I asked.

Everybody has the Tupac that they admire. Certain people love the hip-hop person, the rapper. Strictly just the rapper. A lot of people, the newfound Tupac fans... they're into Death Row-era Tupac. But that was only nine months!

For me, I put Mac Dre right up there with Biggie and 'Pac as legends who have since passed on.

I'm really into, like, characters - music characters like Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain - just, like, how they are and stuff. Like Lil Wayne.

A lot of our fans, they always say Salt-N-Pepa and Spinderella was the soundtrack to their lives.

I'm huge into '90s rap. It's my jam.

I was looking at people like Jim Morrison and David Bowie and Mick Jagger and I thought, Ah! I want to look like them.

I've learned to treat celebrities as equals and just kind of meet them and admire their work, but I definitely could not breathe when I met Johnny Depp and James Franco.

Nineties hip-hop was a big influence for me; it still is. I love '90s everything. And it's when I was born, too. I'm a '90s kid for sure.

If I could ever be on a Missy Elliott record, I could then die. Missy Elliott, Mary J. Blige - I love hearing them interviewed, I love the way they talk about their art. They're very self-assured, they're funny, they're inviting. I love it.

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.

There's a great documentary on Tupac called 'Resurrection' about the last few years of Tupac's life and how he transformed. And, ironically, how this East Coast rapper became this West Coast icon, back when all that Death Row/Sean Combs stuff was going on.

I was raised listening to, like, Jay and Big and Pac, Cassidy, Ludacris, even some of Drake's stuff.

Bell Biv Devoe, back in the day, we used to look up to them. They had incredible style back then, so we wanted to be like them.

Travis Scott is definitely a big inspiration. Lil Wayne was a big one. Lil Wayne, 50 Cent. Those were my two, like, big ones growing up. Then I got into Mac Miller, Wiz Khalifa phase.

You've got a lot of Tupac clones, but I don't think I'm one of them. I just think I give people a little piece of the feeling he gave them.

In the early '90s, my cousin gave me a Snoop Dogg cassette tape, and the rawness of the lyrics were something new to me.

Snoop Dogg and T-Pain, to me, are like legends so it's like, any time you get to work with a legend like that, it's cool.