Curtis Jackson Quotes

The real guys that I knew were really cool people, who I played basketball with and traveled with on teams and knew their families and knew that they love their family. They just happen to do something that wasn't all the way legal, but it was a part of their life, and you knew that they hustled.

I'm a thug. And my thug comes from... my definition of thug comes from half of the street element. Straight street hustling.

Many kids turn to selling drugs. It's not a good career choice, but they see it as a way to get money.

I took high school very casually. There was Teen Town, chess, tennis, boxing, running. Lots of things going on.

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.

When we meet, I'm interested and I'm curious about what he's doing because he's burning a number from a client. And I'm like, 'Who is this?' and my girlfriend's like, 'That's a drug dealer. Stay away from him.'

There were uncles in my life that definitely knew the street life.

I used to get money and hustle and do it in the streets.

Basically, the last 30 minutes of 'Goodfellas,' that was my neighborhood... literally. There were people on my street who did nothing but just wash their car all day and wait for a package, and that's what I thought being an adult was.

As a teen-ager I played cards, shot craps, played pool, went to the track, hung around social clubs. I knew that some card and crap games were run by the mob, and some social clubs were mob social clubs. Even as a kid I knew guys that were here today, gone tomorrow, never seen again, and I knew what had happened.

Either you were a hoodlum, or you were a puddle on the sidewalk.

Before rap came along, I was, actually, actively in the streets; getting in trouble, doing the wrong thing.

The street's alive as secret debts are paid, Contacts made, they vanished unseen. Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades Hustling for the record machine. The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands That face off against each other out in the street, down in Jungleland.

You know the steez; you know my whole program. Brothers from the No-Lands, all we want is the G's guns and grams.

A lot of people have that story that they used to sell crack or shoot people; that's nothing new. But honestly, if that was me, I probably still wouldn't be doing that because it's so many people that's doing that. It just gets old when you hear a million raps about how many ways I could shoot you. So I just try to be more creative and come with something new because I actually care about the music.

I heard about crack on the news and I was like, "Oh, that's what the niggas must be doing." And when I kept coming outside, I was doing my own little jostlin' to get my money.

Never was a gangsta, till I graduated to one.

Whatever your pleasure, I can facilitate. You need weed, you need meth - hey, you need Prozac, I'm your man. I know how you white boys always deal with that depression. I mean me personally, I don't understand what you white boys are all depressed about. Hey, you're white! Smile!

Somehow the rap game remind me of the crack game

You're either slangin' crack rock, or you got a wicked jumpshot.

Being in this game if you are gonna sell drugs and make records too then as many records you make is gonna be as many people that know you sell drugs. We got the hip hop cops listening now.

Eighty-two percent of prisoners in the United States are high-school dropouts. A high-school dropout between the ages of 30 and 34 is two-thirds more likely to be in jail, or to have been in jail, or to be dead.

I had gone to jail, but I wasn't gettin' locked up for drugs then. I was gettin' locked up for guns. My moms kept finding guns and stuff in my room and she was gettin' more scared.

If it wasn't for the music bein' my outlet, I'd probably be hustlin', I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to go and get a nine-to-five, I never finished high school or none of that.