Lil Wayne Quotes

I was very much a tough New York street kid. I went to a school where you had to learn how to get along with everybody or fight with everybody, and I did my fair share of both.

As I was coming up, it always seemed like I was learning. If it wasn't from school, it was the 'hood. The influences of the 'hood are very powerful.

When I was young, I thought it was normal to go to sleep to the sounds of sirens. People on my block were in the biggest gang in the city. They were my close friends - they showed me the ropes, who to watch out for.

In my hood, I was always with the older guys.

I'm from the street. We all know that.

Mike Tyson and I came up together in the streets, and being around people like him, I learned what goes on behind the scenes.

I'm actually one of the sharper tools in the box that haven't been in the streets like that, but I have family members, close loved ones, that that's all they know.

But I was born in the real world, I'm from the streets.

If we grow up in these communities where we have gangs, well, what do you think we're going to belong to? That's what happened to me and what's still happening to hundreds of thousands of other individuals.

I was raised on the streets, in hot, steamy Brooklyn, with stifled air.

People are used to music that justifies street culture but something that's not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.

People don't understand that where I come from, everyone is either a convict, been in jail, been in a gang, is a hooligan of some sorts, but those are my brothers, my family and the people that I travel with. Those are the people that I roll with.

I'm loyal to a fault - even though I've been to hell and back with Vince McMahon, I would never to do anything to hurt him. But it's also survival of the fittest out there.

Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.

Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries.

Growing up in Boston and dancing in the streets, you see a lot of things.

It was a strike against me that I didn't wear baggy jeans and jerseys and that I never hustled, never sold drugs.

There were uncles in my life that definitely knew the street life.

My momma didn't clean up floors so I could be a thug... so I could wear my pants down.

I lived in mafia neighborhoods off and on when I was a kid. If you were in Little Italy, in East Harlem, in Brooklyn... Those neighborhoods were, in those years, dominated by mafia families. You knew it and you felt it, you know?

I definitely had a gang influence with friends and family growing up in South Central, and people might think that Beverly Hills definitely shielded me from some problems. But in actuality, it only opened up a whole new can of worms.

We just need more father figures and more older people to come and school these youth, because there will be a lost generation. And that's what a gang's supposed to be, protecting family and doing what you've got to do for your loved ones.

Whether it is kids carrying knives because they are in gangs or kids carrying knives because they are afraid of gangs, it is the gang culture that underpins the problem.

I grew up in an area of inner-city Liverpool. There were plenty of opportunities but also plenty of challenges - you could go down the right or wrong path, depending on one moment.

I'm from the street, but I'm not a street head. I'm not one of those guys who believe that life is about the street. I'm nerdy at heart, man.