Hip Hop History Quotes

When I think of influential females in hip-hop, my mind goes to Foxy Brown, hands down.

Those folks at Death Row were the Rolling Stones of their time.

There was a time when we had a nice little run: Eve, Lil' Kim, Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, Remy Ma, Da Brat - it goes on. But what I noticed is that a lot of talented females in hip-hop came out of a male camp.

There was no hip-hop before Afrika Bambaataa.

I would have to be traditional and say that my favorite era of hip-hop was between '85-'89. That was the era that got me to love hip-hop.

People are so confused about race and hip-hop that people didn't even consider the Beastie Boys one of the greatest rap groups of all time because they were white.

Hip-hop belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's one of the most radical, revolutionary and reactionary music there is.

People forget how dominant Public Enemy became in the mid '80s. No one talks about how transformative they were. And then that led to the '90s and the sort of East Coast v. West Coast stuff, which is kinda when I came of age.

I had a lot of respect for Prodigy. He brought the hood to the booth. When we were trying to shape this rap thing into something, he was one of the cats I respected for bringing the hood into the booth.

I'm the first rapper ever popping his collar.

I remember when it was just the three Emcees and then Flash put Mr Ness down.

I first started rapping when I heard the Sugarhill Gang in 1979, when I was 11 years old in seventh grade.

When Dre and I started making the 'Straight Outta Compton' record, every day on our way to the studio, we would listen to the 'It Takes A Nation' album.

I look at old performers like James Brown: back in the day when you actually had to work hard to get poppin'. I look at all those types of performers. Even like Kid n' Play and the Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff and Salt-N-Pepa. That era where they had to perform. You couldn't just rap. It had to be an entire performance.

Every ten years, we get a new old school. In 1987, we thought 1977 was the best era in hip-hop. Here we are in 2007, and we're discussing '97/'98, when 50 Cent just started.

Rap is the only super-current music. If you're into reggae or dancehall, and you don't know Bob Marley, then you don't really know what you're listening to. But if you're listening to rap, and you're 15, you're like, 'Grandmaster Flash? Who's that? Public Enemy? Yeah, my dad told me about them once.' And that's just how it is.

Nobody uses skits at all anymore, so it seems like I use a lot. That's how I grew up on tapes. Biggie tapes, Biggie albums would have skits. The Lox would have skits. Mase would have skits. All the dudes I grew up on in Nineties rap would have skits on their projects, just to make you feel like you were right there with them.

I grew up listening to a lot of rap music. My dad's a DJ from Brooklyn, and he's a very soulful guy, so he always spun a lot of hip-hop, and that's where I get a lot of my hip-hop influence.

The talk-box thing that T-Pain does is something new and different for this generation because they don't know about Zapp or Teddy Riley. I think he's creative and has made the talk-box his own in the hip-hop world, but if these young ones studied their musical history, they'd know that.

To me, Wu-Tang is beyond Wu-Tang Clan... It's just like, hip-hop is beyond Grandmaster Flash, but Grandmaster Flash was one of the first guys to hit those turntables like that. The same thing with Wu-Tang. You'll see the difference in hip-hop from the moment we came in to before we came in. We changed it. We changed the whole structure.

I've been rapping since 1979.

So I was about 19 when I got my first SP-1200, and on that SP-1200, I made 'Bring The Pain' and a few other classic Wu joints.

Everyone who raps isn't hip-hop. To be hip-hop, you've got to know the culture. You got to know the history.

As far as Hip Hop Manhattan was after the Bronx.

New York is responsible for bringing that raw, that real gritty hip-hop, because we... originated it.