East Coast Hip Hop Quotes

'Going Back to Cali' is one of my favorite songs because of all the East Coast - West Coast rivalry.

I'm a very big Notorious B.I.G. fan and I do an imitation of him that always cracks everybody up.

Growing up in the Bay, I was still looking for a lot of East Coast hip-hop. I had an older homie put me on to a lot of stuff like Nas' 'Illmatic.'

Notorious B.I.G. was one of my favorites. I started getting into hip-hop around the Bad Boy era.

I felt like I related to East Coast lyricism a little more. Because I couldn't be super gangsta.

I listen to my early Gang Starr interviews, I'm like, damn I was really trying to sound like a New Yorker then.

I listened to Tupac and a lot of Biggie Smalls.

Pete Rock, CL Smooth, all this East Coast stuff - that's kind of, like, the rappers I first admired. I wanna rap just like them because I just thought they were so hard. I thought their delivery was so crazy.

A lot of rappers were influenced off the West Coast, even from the East.

But then again in the East Coast, I think, Tupac, inspired everybody on the East Coast, everybody down south, everybody in the West Coast you know what sayin'.

I used to really like Method Man and Redman for some reason. And Fabolous. A lot of New York rappers, too. Cam'ron. Jim Jones. Hurricane Chris.

Every single place that's brushed upon me has made me the artist that I am - from Nigerian Highlife music and the vocal melodies that I grew up on when I would be sitting with my father and his fellow chiefs, to the funk and freeness of the Bay Area groove, to L.A.'s smooth G-funk legacy, Brooklyn's lyricism, and now Atlanta's trap history.

My entryway into hip-hop was - my biggest introduction was obviously like, you know, the Def Jam, Run D.M.C., Beastie Boys, like, that conglomerate.

Before I got signed to Bad Boy, I grew up listening to Snoop and Tupac and my hood was all Tupac driven.

Randomly enough, all of my favorite rappers growing up were East Coast rappers. I don't know. I just related to them a little more at first - because if you're born in L.A., and you lived there your whole life, Snoop Dogg literally sounds like cars driving by. You feel me? You hear Snoop Dogg so much.

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

There will never be another Biggie ever again.

I'm a dirty south goon - damn right, I ain't no West coast gangster.

Half of my family is in Los Angeles, so my cousin was the first person to play me, like, Snoop Dogg, and I would always feel like, 'OMG, I shouldn't be listening to this,' and my other cousin was the first to introduce me to Aaliyah, so every time I'd go to the West Coast, I'd get those West Coast vibes.

Even looking at my last film, 'Notorious,' you got a perception about B.I.G. and who he was, but there was a different side to him.