Street Cred Quotes

The only thing intimidating about Cube is that he's the father of gangsta' rap. You just worry about getting your lines right, or he might shoot you.

Hip hop has always been braggin' and boasting and 'I'm better at you than this' and 'I'm better at you than that.'

I feel like the D.C. streets just love Gucci Mane. He's like a hood pastor.

New York gave me hell for that 'Purple Swag,' man. They didn't respect me until 'Peso.'

You can't please everyone. Just because I don't behave a certain way, some folks will say you don't have any street cred. I've pretty much had to put up with that since I was a little kid, just because I was raised to communicate in a certain fashion. Some people didn't like it.

I'm from the 805, man. I don't have to talk about where I'm from, but I'm tough.

I think swag is very important to rappers. It's the overall appearance and style of an artist - these blue shorts and this blue hat and this $80,000 chain, this jewelry and all these tattoos, that's swag.

Biggie was the King Of New York as a rapper. There's a lot more dangerous guys than Biggie Smalls out there, you know what I'm saying? John Gotti was way closer to King Of New York than him.

All I've got to say is if I'm a sellout, I'm selling out arenas all over the world, and I'd rather be selling out arenas than selling out of my trunk on the corner of my block.

Hey, you gotta love a gangsta girl. Even the suburban and preppy girls wanna be gangsta girls. That's the whole gimmick to it. Everybody wants to be a gangsta girl.

When I started as an assistant at 'SNL,' I got my eyes on Kristen Wiig and was able to bring her for an audition for Lorne Michaels and the other producers. Turns out, Kristen Wiig can give you some street cred early on.

I have to be able to rap. I don't have the look. I don't have the typical slim-dude, fancy-clothes look. That's not me. I have to be able to rap - there is no other choice, or else I get eaten alive.

I'm definitely a West Coast artist, so much so that I'm gonna get 'Thug Life' tatted on my stomach one day.

I remember rap music. We used to party and dance off of it. Today it's all about a whole different angle... Rappers are going against each other, and it's more of a bragging, boasting thing.

In hip hop, 'real' has always meant one who represents in actuality what they present in imagery. For instance, once upon a time, if a rapper spoke about being gangsta, they needed to truly be that, or they were 'frontin.'

Part of North Jersey life is that everyone is obsessed with being tough all the time.

What I actually do put much more weight on, in all honesty, is not being critically acclaimed - it's being respected by my OGs. When I talk to E-40 on the phone, every time I talk to him, I'm like, you know, if he tells me I'm doing good, I'm doing good.

In Brooklyn, all the kids call me the 'Willy Wonka of the Hood.'

When I was a kid if you didn't have "Lil" in front of your name, you were trash.

I don't gang bang but I'll bang tha thang!

You got to treat Mobb Deep different because our fan base is different. Our fan base is in the 'hood across the world.

After I did 'Brooklyn,' I did about five or six violent films in one way or another, and not always with me being the bad guy, but something violent about it to keep the street cred up, really.

My brothers kept me relevant. They got my back 100%. After all the times I've been incarcerated, they've always had my back.