Rap Artist Quotes

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 name came from me wanting a 'double-letter' artist name. In search of the ultimate L-word to put in front of my real name Luke, I heard Snoop Dogg rapping in Gin and Juice 'Laaaaiiidbackk ... ' and I was sold! ~ Laidback Luke

One of my favorite things that Yahoo does on a regular basis is this story: "Wealthiest Rap Artists." That's an example of the internet just perpetuating this myth that we're all just sitting around in these mansions like Steven Tyler, bopping around in our swimming pool. It's bullshit. ~ DJ Shadow

I came from the South Side of Chicago wanting to be a rap artist and make videos. ~ Common

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 don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited. ~ Stewart Copeland

I've never had a problem with someone saying "yeah you're pretty, but you can't rap." In fact, I've heard things about other artists, opposed to me. To make a long story short, I've never had a problem with that. My skills speak for themselves. ~ Jacki-O

Public Enemy started out as a benchmark in rap music in the mid-1980s. We felt there was a need to actually progress the music and say something because we were slightly older than the demographic of rap artists at the time. It was a time of heightened rightwing politics, so the climate dictated the direction of the group. ~ Chuck D

This game is lame, the music comes second
So you can save that stupidness for all them artists you checkin.
Popularity don't last long, I'm in it for classics,
Cause the other side of the biz is fake and it's plastic. ~ Craig G

I follow politics in a big way, and always have since I was a kid. I've got opinions, but they're opinions on both sides - not just anti-Republican, which is a real popular thing for a rap artist to do. If you dis Republicans, nobody will get mad. I think the two-party system sucks. It's absolutely ignorant. ~ Sir Mix-a-Lot

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

It's just that when you heard hip-hop, no matter where you were, it was a culture that kind of made you want to try to be part of it. Whether you thought you were an artist, whether you thought you could be a DJ, whether you thought you could breakdance, or whether you thought you could rap. It was the kind of culture that had a lot of open doors. ~ Ice-T

Rap isn't poetry, not least because it involves music and often other elements that aren't words. But the way poets in English use things like rhyme and meter, and the ways these conventions both do and don't apply to rap we try to lay out the rules for rap, in order to understand the techniques that artists like Jay-Z and Kanye employ. ~ Andrew Hoberek

The first creation of every artist is getting carved from the best moments of his life!! ~ Nelson Jack

An age is best revealed by its artists of the second rank. ~ Geoffrey Wolff

The creatives, they want to connect with people. These artists, the clothing designers, they want to connect with people the same way that music gets to connect with people. But the cost of silk is too expensive. And they won't lower their quality levels. So I can spend $2 million on a record and give it out in a democratic way. They could spend all their time making the greatest dress in the world, and it's just impossible to hand-make that many. ~ Kanye West

I love playing instruments that I don't know how to play or am not familiar with. I like the idea of danger and innocence that comes from it. As an artist, I feel I should be able to do something with anything I get my hands on. The music becomes minimalist because of my limited knowledge. ~ Gustavo Santaolalla

The interesting artists I know are the ones doing political work. The most interesting people I know are the people who care about politics. ~ Nell Zink

I lay down so hard, I got bed rash ~ Lil' Wayne

Sometime during the mid-50s I said, 'I am an artist.' Before that, for many years, I had said, 'I'm going to be an artist.' Then I went through a change of mind and a change of heart. What made 'going to be an artist' into 'being an artist', was, in part, a spiritual change. ~ Jasper Johns

When I was an art student in the early 60's before the acid scene began I was smoking pot just like anyone else who was an artist. ~ Bill Griffith

Jobs was a strong-willed, elitist artist who didn't want his creations mutated inauspiciously by unworthy programmers. To him it would be as if someone off the street added some brush strokes to a Picasso painting or changed the lyrics to a Dylan song. ~ Walter Isaacson

I love being a struggling artist; it makes me feel very alive. ~ Jonathan Evison

There is no trajectory so pathetic as that of an artist in decline. ~ Edward Abbey

I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more. ~ Anton Chekhov

And what more could I possibly ask as an artist than that your most precious visions, however rare, assume sometimes the forms of my images. ~ Maya Deren

A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist. ~ E. M. Forster

My idea of covers is that you should never cover a song and do it exactly like the artist because everyone's always going to compare it to the way the original artists did it, and they're just going to go, 'Oh I like the original better.' ~ Glenn Danzig

The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say. ~ Boris Pasternak

Anything that exists on the human palette is, from my point of view, fair game for artists to portray. You don't have to go see it if you don't want to, so don't go. ~ Tobin Bell

I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist. ~ Maurice Sendak

Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to geting pussy. ~ Tupac Shakur

All of the films that I've made are about the country I live in and grew up in ... And I think if you're going to put an artist's eye to it, you're going to put a critical eye to it. I've always been interested in the gray area that exists between the black and white, or the red and blue, and that's where complexity lies. ~ Robert Redford

My make-up artist, she uses bronzer on the eyelids too. And also a little bit on the forehead to make everything look even. ~ Bar Refaeli

Good art looks new because the artist has recombined something old to make something better. ~ Walter Darby Bannard

When you're making your living as a writer or an artist or a musician, you kind of live in a trance. You're sort of in the day-to-day world, you're certainly there for your day-to-day relationships with people, and so on. ~ Stephen R. Bissette

The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist. ~ Stephen Hawking

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Hubris itself will not let you be an artist. ~ Larry Wall

Working hard may help you maintain,
To learn to overcome the heartaches and pain. ~ Inspectah Deck

The spirit of an artist's gifts can wake our own. ~ Lewis Hyde "The Gift"

Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain. ~ Leo Buscaglia

Great artists need great clients. ~ I.M. Pei

The artist, no less than the writer, needs a vocabulary before he can embark on a "copy" of reality. ~ E.H. Gombrich

I love all types of music. Jazz, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop. I often write scripts to instrumentals like a hip-hop artist. Music inspires me to write. It's either music playing or completely silent. Sometimes distant sound fuels you. In New York there's always a buzzing beneath you. ~ Chadwick Boseman

To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the
personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am
willing to excuse a thousand faults. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

He [the artist] ought to have 'these powerful organs of expression' - colour and chiaroscuro - entirely at his command, that he may use them in every possible form, as well as that he may do with the most perfect freedom; therefore, whether he wishes to make the subject of a joyous, solemn, or meditative character, by flinging over it the cheerful aspect which the sun bestows, by a proper disposition of shade, or by the appearances that beautify its arising or its setting, a true "General Effect" should never be lost sight of. ~ John Constable

Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight. ~ Auguste Rodin

I always do my rap from the outside looking in. Like I do my rap as if I'm looking at me rap. ~ Lil' Wayne

Variation does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his mode of expression this only means that he has changed his manner of thinking, and in changing, it might be for the better or it might be for the worse. ~ Pablo Picasso

Strictly speaking, there are no holidays for art; art pursues you everywhere, and that's just fine with the artist. ~ Elfriede Jelinek

One reason for making and exhibiting a work is to induce a reaction or change in the viewer ... In this sense, the work as such is nonexistent except when it functions as a medium of change between the artist and viewer. ~ Adrian Piper

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

I'm that neighborhood blizzard flooding these streets with snow. ~ Kool G Rap