Conscious Rap Quotes

When you look at a guy like a Jay-Z or look at a guy like a Nas, you don't necessarily qualify them as conscious rap purely, although they are extremely conscious of the social inequities that prevail. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

It's not that you don't make any money doing conscious rap music. You make a lot of money doing this, but if you're greedy and you're not satisfied with $500,000 a year, and you want $2 million a year, then you will suffer as a conscious rap artist. ~ KRS-One

My sister Suga Tee is doing conscious rap. She speaks to the youth. She has an album coming out soon. She got saved but she is still doing her thing. She still spits good game. She's talented. She sings. I don't know if a lot of people know this but Suga Tee has a beautiful voice. So ya'll look out for her album you dig? And look forward to a future Clique album. ~ E-40

As a conscious rap artist, you should not want to be in a gangster market. You should be trying to establish your own market, create a place where you can be yourself and make some money and feed your family. ~ KRS-One

I look at WorldstarHipHop in the morning, Bossip, Global Grind, and everything in between, but it's all so quick, I don't even think about it. And I've never been a fan of lyrical or socially conscious rap music. ~ Harmony Korine

I believe a lot in gangsta rap, I see in it a lot of positive things as it is. I believe it is only about doing politicization work. Revolutionary change will come from there, it won't come from conscious rap. ~ Bocafloja

The hip-hop that I really connected with was Public Enemy, KRS-One, Ice Cube, and N.W.A. That late '80s and early '90s era. The beginning of gangster rap and the beginning of politically conscious rap. I had a very immature, adolescent feeling of, "Wow, I can really connect with these people through the stories they're telling in this music." ~ Jess Row

Rap's conscious response to the poverty and oppression of U.S. blacks is like some hideous parody of sixties black pride. ~ David Foster Wallace

If you're true to the upliftment of people and the unity of people, raising the self-worth of people, then you live within your means. But the problem is that we're looking at the grass on the other side, saying, "That's greener. I want to be in the thug market, but I want to be a conscious rap artist." It doesn't work like that. ~ KRS-One

We have to remember examples of many artists of conscious rap who have been coopted by the Department of State of the United States to be cultural ambassadors in different parts of the world, like Syria, like other parts of the Middle East, including conscious Islamic-American rappers that are representing an international political agenda for the United States through cultures more affable for people of color in other parts of the world. ~ Bocafloja

We have to remember that the experience of gangsta rap as such in its foundation is an anti-systemic experience primarily. And it is an anti-systemic experience that is not in some cases politicized, but in general results in a much more transgressive, much more uncomfortable music for the structures of power, than conscious rap or political rap. ~ Bocafloja

We moved, and there was a golden era in the '40s when we were so conscious of who we were as Australians. ~ Graeme Murphy

My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious. ~ Karl Kraus

I was very, very nervous about the naked scenes. I'm very shy and reserved. But it was Bertolucci and I have seen Last Tango. It's not pornographic. He's a master of eroticism. I stopped being self-conscious. You have to forget everything. ~ Eva Green

I sat down with my long time business partner and Rap-A-Lot CEO James Prince to review the music that we had and quickly came up with an outstanding track list. 'The Epilogue' is the perfect opportunity to release some great material to the fans and a proper final chapter for the Trill-ogy. Good music is timeless. ~ Bun B.

Infrareds on little people standing with some big heads,
I was Captain Kirk, walkin' with a black t-shirt.
LAPD, the nurse asked did my knee hurt?
I was in pain, little Martians tryin' ta take my brain,
Hospitals came, detectives wrote down my name.
I was to blame, my life never been the same.
A true story; I tell ya, it'll never bore me.
My classmate died, my other friend named Cory
Drinkin' 40s, he jumped out the project window,
Stabbed himself with a yellow number 2 pencil. ~ Kool Keith

Now I'm not the type that gets upset,
Try to disrespect folks just to earn respect.
But learn this fact: whether white or black,
I can't be conquered in my style of rap.
For jealousy and envy are dumb ones' tools,
So Ricky says nothing, he keeps his cool.
Revenge is not a mission that the Ruler's on,
Just forgiveness required for the wrong that's done. ~ Slick Rick

Yeah, my life a bitch, but you know nothing about her
Been to hell and back, I can show you vouchers ~ Lil' Wayne

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Digital leadership must be extremely visionary, mindful, creative, empathetic, generous, conscious, passionate, and humble. ~ Pearl Zhu

When you're young, you don't especially think of yourself as being young. You're just alive and everything's interesting and you don't think of things in terms of age because you're not conscious of it. ~ Richard Hell

1974 meant big cuffs, bell-bottoms, platform shoes with two-tone colors, and body-conscious shirts. ~ Kyle MacLachlan

Both Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King used these phrases ("playing out of one's mind," or "over one's head") to describe their performances while winning tghe finals at Wimbledon in 1975 ... The player loses himself in the action, continually breaki g the false limits placed on is potential. Awareness becomes acutely heightened, while analysis, anxiety and self-conscious thought are compoletly forgotten. Enjoyment is at a peak - pure and unspoiled. ~ Timothy Gallwey

They are very large in effect, these painters; very little self-conscious; they have smooth broad spaces in their minds where I am all prickles & promontories. ~ Virginia Woolf

The mind of one meditating on a single object becomes one-pointed. And one-pointedness of mind leads to abidance in the self. Real attainment is to be fully conscious, to be aware of surroundings and the people around, to move among them all, but not to merge consciousness in the environment. One should remain in inner independent awareness. ~ Ramana Maharshi

All your problems or perceived causes of suffering or unhappiness were miraculously removed for you today, but you had not become more present, more conscious, you would soon find yourself with a similar set of problems or causes of suffering, like a shadow that follows you wherever you go. Ultimately, ~ Eckhart Tolle

You hate it before you played it. I already forgave ya. ~ J. Cole

Before we can become who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person who we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger. ~ Thomas Merton

Cause I want to be on 106 and Park pushing a benz ~ Kanye West

They cannot divide us by saying that you're middle class or you're lower class. ~ H. Rap Brown

As we become more aware of what it takes to move through the journey from where we are to where we are destined to be, the teaching stories that are within my story, our story, is a reminder to use your conscious and creative powers of imagination to choose which road(s) you will take. ~ Mozella Ademiluyi

And - holy shit was this song bad. It was like the singer was stabbing my ear with a dagger made of dried turds. ~ David Wong

Sometimes it takes a knock in life to make us sit up and grab life. And I had just undergone the mother of all knocks.
But out of that despair, fear, and struggle came a silver lining--and I didn't even know it yet.
What I did know was that I needed something to give me back my hope. My sparkle. My life. I found that something in my Christian faith, in my family, and also in my dreams of adventure.
My Christian faith says that I have nothing ever to fear or worry about. All is well.
At that time, in and out of hospital, it reminded me that, despite the pain and despair, I was held and loved and blessed--my life was secure through Jesus Christ.
That gift of grace has been so powerful to me ever since.
My family said something very similar: "Bear, you are an idiot, but we love you anyway, forever and always."
That meant the world to me and gave me back some of the confidence that I was struggling to find again.
Finally, I had my not insubstantial dreams of adventure. And those dreams were beginning to burn bright once more.
You see, I figure that life is a gift. I was learning that more than anyone.
My mum always taught me to be grateful for gifts. And as I slowly began to recover my strength and confidence, I realized that what mattered was doing something bold with that present.
A gift buried under a tree is wasted.
Alone one night in bed, I made a verbal, out-loud, conscious decision, that if I recovered well enough ~ Bear Grylls

Conscious breathing anchors us into the nowness of life and gives us a fresh outlook, no different from how a baby observes reality without mental commentary. The baby enjoys watching the world and human activity without any limiting mental concepts spoiling his or her perception. Naturally, we all have to evolve from the helpless state of babyhood, but to be able to tap into that wonderful ability and truly BE in the moment is immensely liberating. ~ Christopher Dines

He had wondered, as had most people at one time or another, precisely why an android bounced helplessly about when confronted by an empathy-measuring test. Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida. For one thing, the empathic faculty probably required an unimpaired group instinct; a solitary organism, such as a spider, would have no use for it; in fact it would tend to abort a spider's ability to survive. It would make him conscious of the desire to live on the part of his prey. Hence all predators, even highly developed mammals such as cats, would starve.

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated. As in the fusion with Mercer, everyone ascended together or, when the cycle had come to an end, fell together into the trough of the tomb world. Oddly, it resembled a sort of biological insurance, but double-edged. As long as some creature experienced joy, then the condition for all other creatures included a fragment of joy. However, if any living being suffered, then for all the rest the shadow could not be entirely cast off. A herd animal such as man would acquire a higher survival factor through this; an owl or a cobra would be destroyed.
Philip K. Dick

I find rap, dance, and hip-hop vaguely terrifying. I don't have the right clothes to be into them, and it all seems a bit intense. I file these genres along with heavy metal and speed metal under people who would kill, then eat me. ~ Caitlin Moran

Ours is an immutable reality which should make you shudder when you approach us if you are really conscious of the fact that your reality is a mere transitory and fleeting illusion, taking this form today and that tomorrow, ~ Luigi Pirandello

Every human being is inherently a unique and individual form of life. He or she is made like that. But there is something which a person can do over and above the given material of her nature, and that is she can become conscious of what makes her the person she is, and he can work consciously toward relating what is himself to the world around him. ~ Carl Jung

People have been so busy relating to how I look, it's a miracle I didn't become a self-conscious blob of protoplasm. ~ Robert Redford

When you choose to be a competitor you choose to be a survivor. When you choose to compete, you make the conscious decision to find out what your real limits are, not just what you think they are. ~ Pat Summitt

America has a rap sheet. You can't police the world and tell the world how to act when you're just as bad yourself. ~ Paul Mooney

I took the longest showers of my life after every time I visited Gramacho. It affects the personality of the catadores. They always dress really well, they're very sharp, and when they go out they always wear a lot of perfume because they're very conscious of the possibility of having the smell. ~ Vik Muniz

Silence is round me, wideness ineffable;
White birds on the ocean diving and wandering;
A soundless sea on a voiceless heaven,
Azure on azure, is mutely gazing.

Identified with silence and boundlessness
My spirit widens clasping the universe
Till all that seemed becomes the Real,
One in a mighty and single vastness.

Someone broods there nameless and bodiless,
Conscious and lonely, deathless and infinite,
And, sole in a still eternal rapture,
Gathers all things to his heart for ever. ~ Sri Aurobindo

There are many ways to become mistress (or master) of one's fate after a betrayal, but they all have things in common: conscious effort and a fighting spirit, embodied in what I call 'the Affirmative No.' The Affirmative No incorporates self-enhancing outrage, independence, and courage. It is a stance through which a traumatized person actively proclaims her will by rejecting the role of victim.... Unable to change our predicaments, we actively changed their meaning and our relationship to them, and in the process, we discovered that we could exert power when we thought we had none. ~ Jeanne Safer

The spoiled superstar brat wouldn't get far in Oklahoma City. We're very value-conscious. Our city was settled in a land run. Those 10,000 people were desperate for a better life. ~ Mick Cornett

I was that woman who once felt ashamed for my dreams, fantasies, and desires until I realized this is my one and only conscious experience to feel and breathe life and everything that is included. ~ Helen Edwards