Hip-hop Industry Quotes

A lot of people have been sending me beats, I've just been getting it in.

All I can say is that I've had too many people in the hip-hop industry really like what I'm doing. I know where I'm coming from, and the album speaks for itself.

I have to put a business model together because certain businesses are approaching me as a legend, as if I'm on my way out. Same goes for the way I get presented on the VH1 Hip Hop Honors and BET. I get lifetime achievement awards because of who I am and what I've done, but they want to put me in a place, as if I'm on my way out.

I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.

You already past 21 and you still talking about "I'ma be a rapper." You ain't did one show, niggas ain't seen you on TV. So Kendrick kind of went through the same thing I went through. He just had his mom's house to go to.

I think it's very important for hip-hop, when an artist reaches a certain level, to ascend to executive work.

While silly ni**as argue over who gon' snatch the crown / Look around my ni**a, white people have snatched the sound / This year I'll probably go to the awards dappered down / Watch Iggy win a Grammy as I try to crack a smile.

I couldn't sell pills no more [because my] homie went to jail. I was just dirt broke. I went to TDE and was literally living in the studio where you record. I went damn near a whole two years not getting sleep because there was always somebody there recording. I was taking baths with dishwashing liquid.I was one of the dudes [who] would never ask for nothing so I would never ask for soap.

Rap is no longer a pastime; this is a worldwide profession.

So my thing is we want come in and diffuse anything that's not real, anything that doesn't associate with real hip-hop. We want to be the one that says, 'Yo, we want to help build and build a bigger and better industry.' I'm just like, 'Yo, with talent from Toronto, Vancouver, Quebec. Who's paying attention?'

I can't control what people think. I'm not trying to manipulate people's thoughts or sentiments. I write all the time. You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions. It's machine-like how things are run now in hip-hop, and my ambitions are different.

I guess the difference between the Korean hip-hop scene and the American hip-hop scene is that in the American hip-hop scene, you know, they have their Jay-Zs. They can become conglomerates through hip-hop. In Korea, it doesn't happen.

What's happening right now in the Hip Hop industry is that it is deeply affected by the general economy of America.

When I do music, I don't feel like it's competition. Then again, it kinda is, but I don't like thinking like that. And I don't understand why they do that to women and, especially, women in hip-hop.

In the hip-hop world, Eazy-E was the personification of evil. He paid my hospital bill, about $60,000, but he made me pay him back, which is cool, except that I later found out that he paid the bill out of my share of a publishing deal he made for me.

It's not just hip-hop that's dead. Mostly every form of American music is dead. It's been dead. R&B isn't really good.

I worked with Ty Dolla Sign, YG, Nipsey Hussle, Metro Boomin - I build relationships, and I try to stay afloat with everyone who is hot or cool, period.

Def Jam just made deals with me. They wouldn't let me go because they didn't really have that much street cred. So they kept me around.

Everything's pretty consistent in the industry, you know. There's a couple of naysayers, whatever, people who don't agree. But for the most part a lot of people believe in the new class of MC's that coming to the game.

My flow follows sometimes what's going on in the hip-hop industry even though I'm speaking Jamaican patois.

By the end of high school, I was interning for no school credit, no money, no nothing, for Jonny Shipes. He was my first entry into going to XXL, being around rappers, meeting Yams and A$AP.

Yeah, me and Q-Tip is cool outside of the business, but you know, within the business sometimes it can get ugly, you know what I mean?

It's hard being a woman in the hip-hop game, but I'm lucky to have good people around me who have had my back.

Wayne's done way more for my career than Jay-Z. Wayne is the reason I'm here.