Emily Rios Quotes

I grew up with Chief Keef and Lil Reese. We all lived in the same environment, I went to school with them and everything.

For thugs from the ghetto, violence is a way of life - it's what helps you survive.

I grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. At the time I was growing up with my father - before it was gentrified - it was a very rough neighborhood. He felt that if I got into or started embracing the rap culture, I would be one step closer to being on the streets.

Me, myself, I was a part of gang bangin', you know what I'm sayin'?

While my cousins were gang-banging, I was trying to learn what the Internet was about.

I rap about Memphis and what a dangerous spot that is.

It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.

I've never been in a gang. None of my friends have been in a gang. I've never rolled around with big entourages.

Three thousand jurisdictions across the U.S. are estimated to have had gang activity in 2001. In 2002, 32% of cities with a population of 25 to 50 thousand reported a gang-related homicide.

What people don't understand is joining a gang ain't bad, it's cool, it's fine. When you in the hood, joining a gang it's cool because all your friends are in the gang, all your family's in the gang. We're not just killing people every night, we're just hanging out, having a good time.

Where I come from, the block become your daddy.

I know people in gangs; I could have went down that route.

There are too many senior citizens and good residents in Chicago who are sick and tired of having to walk several blocks out of their way when they leave their homes just to avoid the gangs and drug dealers on the street corner.

I think 98% of gang members in Los Angeles would agree that being a gang is just like being part of a community.

I went to Locke High School in Watts towards the end of the super gangbanging era.

When you're in a gang, you go through life like any other individual. You have certain obligations, but you are not forced to do anything.

My family had been involved in gangs since the 1970s.

I grew up in South Central Los Angeles in the '80s, back when it just wasn't a cool scene. But my mother had the foresight to look for a number of projects that would keep us away from the streets.

And Alpo ordered guys to slaughter guys, and the whole Harlem was in tears when Rich Porter died.

Gangbanging is a survival instinct, regardless of how anybody tries to paint it.

Drugs bring in guns. They bring in all these black-on-black crimes.

I was raised inside the gang culture.

'Clockers' - as much as it is a very focused crime drama, it sprawls.

My father figures were all gang members.