QUOTES by Rakim
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
I always say a rapper is like a halfback in the NFL. You got about seven years, then it's a wrap.
Quote by -Rakim
I was heavily influenced by Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Caz, but I kind of wanted to take it somewhere else.
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It's hard to have fun and make a fun album when you know that it's something that you need to say.
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There are certain things that I wish people knew - certain things that I feel I started and certain things that I'm responsible for. Sometimes you wish people knew where a certain style of rapping came from or who was the first one to say whatever.
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Being a new artist, I was trying to make a good album and hope that people like Kool Moe Dee and Melle Mel and some of the firstborns appreciated it. I was being influenced by them brothers there. That's where I got my start and my first listen.
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When I was in high school, the energy in hip-hop at that point was the park energy... I was just trying to develop my style at that point, and I think, when you're trying to find your style, you find yourself.
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I started studying in '85 and got knowledge of self and started spitting. What was going on was taking the understanding of what I was reading and applying it with my life and applying it with my rhymes.
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You know, 'Paid in Full' is a classic album, man. It kind of got me to where I am now, so I can never get tired of 'Paid in Full.'
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We need a few more Kanyes, people that's really passionate about hip-hop and who keep it alive.
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Subconsciously, Islam took over me, so it was like eighty or ninety percent of the fabric of the person I was.
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Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music, man - it's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.
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I can't look at TV without seeing something that's been influenced by rap. Even commercials for cereal. When I was small, I was a fan of cartoon characters - now the cartoon characters are rapping!
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I try to stay true to my style, and I understand the foundation of my style and where it came from. But at the same time, you take that experience and learn different ways to write, different ways to turn on that creative energy.
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The laws are gonna have to change. And it's 2016. We can't keep using all the laws that was made back in the 1700s. We're gonna have to understand that times have changed.
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My approach to writing rhymes went hand in hand with the music. I'd try to make different rhythms with my rhymes on the track by tripping up patterns, using multi-syllable words, different syncopations. I'd try to be like a different instrument.
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I've always tried to insert consciousness and spirituality in my records, interpreting the writings of all cultures and religions and how they apply to life in modern times.
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I'm not in that state of mind that I was back in '86 - hip-hop is not in that state of mind that it was back in '86. Times change. I change.
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I'm not a mainstream artist. But I've seen my kids being born; I've seen them take their first steps, I've seen them grow up and start school. That's worth more to me than any umpteen million dollars.
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Social media gives a lot of people a platform where they can express their feelings. I like to do mine through songs. I let info build up. In some way, it translates into paper whenever I sit down.
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When me and Eric did songs back in the day, we didn't go and sit down in front of no A&R. We made our album, and then, when we finished, we handed it in, and then we picked the best song for the first single.
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I was an underground artist, but the underground status was successful. Coming from where I came from to see where rap is now, now artists are selling from a million to eight million copies.
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My aunt Ruth Brown was a jazz musician. I got hooked on it at a young age, understanding what John Coltrane was doing playing two notes on the saxophone at the same time, which is impossible.
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People always tell me that they grew up with me - like I'm their brother or uncle or some other family member. That keeps me going.
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Back in the day, rappers were 'bump bump bump ba bump ba bump.' They was rhyming like that, but I was like, 'bababa bump bump babum ba babump bababa bump.'
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As a young artist, especially in rap and at that time that I came out, originality was big.
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To know that I was being heard on the radio, it made me feel as if I was, I guess, spread across New York. It was incredible.
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The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious... There was an integrity that people respected.
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Hip-hop has taken a lot of different routes throughout the years, man. I've been around since 1986.
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I'm very smart with my paper! I stopped buying things for myself a long time ago - now I just buy things for my kids or my wife.
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You can't have 12 records on your album and none of them sound alike. You gotta kind of have something to make them say, 'That sounds like Rakim.'
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Everything I did on the 'Paid in Full' album and those first three albums, I wrote everything right in the studio.
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You know, I got kids. I got sons, and I try to tell them, 'Look, man, when you in the car and you get pulled over, hands on the steering wheel. 'Yes, sir. No sir.' Your job is to either wind up in jail, so I can come get you, or be able to pull off. That's your job.'
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Maino is an artist that I feel walks what he talks - you can tell what he raps about and what he's been through is very similar. You've got a lot of rappers that rap about what they've heard or seen, but I think Maino is one of the rappers that has actually lived it.
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