Mos Def Quotes

As long as there's a demand for gangsta rap, it will be supplied.

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.

Thug Life to me is dead.

N.W.A. were the first great rap audio documentarians of the problems in our inner cities.

Gangsta rap often reaches higher than its ugliest, lowest common denominator, misogyny, violence, materialism and sexual transgression are not its exclusive domain. At its best, this music draws attention to complex dimensions of ghetto life ignored by most Americans. Indeed, gangsta rap's in-your-face style may do more to force America to confront crucial social problems than a million sermons or political speeches.

My life after childhood has two main stories: the story of the hustler and the story of the rapper, and the two overlap as much as they diverge. I was on the streets for more than half of my life from the time I was thirteen years old. People sometimes say that now I'm so far away from that life - now that I've got businesses and Grammys and magazine covers - that I have no right to rap about it. But how distant is the story of your own life ever going to be? The feelings I had during that part of my life were burned into me like a brand. It was life during wartime.

Everything I do is going to be gangsta rap, street based, street oriented... I'm from Gary, Indiana, and everybody's damn near at the poverty level.

I think that hip-hop is more of an individual effort. That means you're an artist from the streets, they expect you to rap about the streets, because that's what happens there.

If you 35, 28, or 30 years old, and you decide you're gonna pick up a rag and start bangin', and you can look yourself in the mirror and you still feel like you're a man? That's cool, do your thing.

Rap music came along and saved my life. I started to tell the stories of the streets and that was my way out.

Around the middle of last year I started listening to a lot of rap, like Nicki Minaj and Drake... They all sing about such opulence, stuff that just didn’t relate to me - or anyone that I knew. I began thinking, “How are we listening to this? It’s completely irrelevant.”

One of the things that I'm dying to do is to sing the hook on a big rap song. No one's ever called me to do that.

In terms of content, a lot of rap is crap, with all the sexism and homophobic bullshit. It's incredible how rappers are always preaching nonconformity - you know, "I'm just gonna go my own way and be my own man and blah blah blah" - but they're the first ones to do so many things that they have to do. They have to do that hip-hop thing, a certain way of walking, and it's so conformist.

Props is a true thug's wife.

I'm not a gangster, I don't have no desire to be hard.

I started freestyling with friends about eight or nine years ago. I started writing also around the same time, but didn't meet blockhead until about '94. I started making beats not until about '96.

Money made me evil, court cases got me stressed Niggaz aimin at my head but I still wear my vest.