Rap Quotes

What I'm trying to do is break the genre from what is rap and what is music.

We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock.

A lot of the stuff I've accumulated over the last few years of touring I thought was really interesting. Like sounds, sound bites, and beats even, but they weren't good dance beats they weren't ones anyone would want to rap over or anything.

If I could rap, that would be a sensation, but I can't, you see, I'm just a Caucasian.

When I rap, it's just an extension of how I speak, and that's how I talk. If you don't like it, don't listen.

Rap is a gimmick, but I'm for the hip-hop, the culture.

A lot of the younger kids now can rap, but they're scared of the crowd. Mastery of that stage is an MC. I don't know if you've seen any great MCs on stage but when you do it's like wow, this is more than the words to rhymes.

I listen to music for emotion and I get zero emotion from rap.

In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.

But, Eminem... No, I've loved rap for a long time, especially when it got out of its first period and became this gangsta rap, ya know this heavy rap thing? That's when I started to fall in love with it. I loved the lyrics. I loved the beat.

You have to come in on a professional level to make it, otherwise you just can't get into rap.

When you do rap albums, you got to train yourself. You got to constantly be in character.

I think America has a bad rap right now... and hopefully Obama will change that.

They that will not be counseled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you on the knuckles.

I don't have to put out another rap record. I can do it at my casual pace.

I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don't know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.

While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyone, but everyone should have the choice.