Hip Hop Evolution Quotes

Hip-hop as a culture itself goes through stages. It grows - it's breathing, living. I've noticed that we usually start off conscious, then we wind up very highly sexual, and then we thug it out. Then things get a little funny again, with comedy and that kind of thing.

I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the 'black people's CNN.' Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect.

I'm forever learning and that's why I'm always able to create new styles and new dimensions of hip-hop.

People forget how dominant Public Enemy became in the mid '80s. No one talks about how transformative they were. And then that led to the '90s and the sort of East Coast v. West Coast stuff, which is kinda when I came of age.

I have gone through many difference phases in my love affair with hip-hop.It evolves, your taste. It sometimes deepens, in terms of what's out; sometimes it's not as deep in terms of what's out. So it's definitely an evolution. I don't ever claim to be a hip-hop head.

I never made beats to make beats; I only made them when there was a record to make them for. That's one of the things that has changed in hip-hop that's made me like it less. It feels much more like it's a producer-driven medium, where there are all these tracks that are completely interchangeable.

Every ten years, we get a new old school. In 1987, we thought 1977 was the best era in hip-hop. Here we are in 2007, and we're discussing '97/'98, when 50 Cent just started.

Hip-hop has taken a lot of different routes throughout the years, man. I've been around since 1986.

I felt like when I got with Kanye, and we discussed me being on G.O.O.D. Music, he just really took me to a place in regards to music that I love and music that I had made previously. We had a clear understanding of what I wanted to make, and he just seemed like he was an advocate for hardcore, uncompromising hip-hop.

I feel like everything I do in the hip-hop world has an influence. People don't really notice what I did until somebody else does it. As far as hip-hop goes, I want to continue to make good music, and good art. I don't really follow the state of hip-hop.

To me, Wu-Tang is beyond Wu-Tang Clan... It's just like, hip-hop is beyond Grandmaster Flash, but Grandmaster Flash was one of the first guys to hit those turntables like that. The same thing with Wu-Tang. You'll see the difference in hip-hop from the moment we came in to before we came in. We changed it. We changed the whole structure.

I'm gonna try and change the course of hip hop again.

Hip hop started in NY so it's important that New Yorkers realise that to talk about NY music and its sound should not be a small-minded conversation. Music is supposed to evolve. It's supposed to be going through changes, it's not supposed to sound exactly the same as what it did when it started. NY hip hop has to be allowed to move on and grow and expand.

I think that hip-hop has done what it was supposed to have done, which is it defied all the laws of what is statistically a music genre and what statistically is not a music genre. Because it wasn't supposed to be here.

I still love old-school hip-hop, but there hasn't been a lot that I've taken from the new stuff.

I ain't calling me God. I'm just doing my part on where I think hip hop should go. I think hip hop should be about more money, crazier sounds, different beats.

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.

The radio stations strayed away from the raw hip-hop that they were playing in the early 1990s. We were like, 'All this watered down stuff is dominating the airwaves. We should make a record to make fun of that' and Guru's like, 'Let's call it 'Mass Appeal.''

I started singing because it was a natural evolution in hip-hop to me. Without Prince, I wouldn't have embraced that. I wouldn't have been able to embrace me.

The Chronic represented everything that I hated about hip-hop as a fan, but then later represented everything that I stood for as a musician and engineer.

So I think hip-hop is moving and is going to continue to move in the direction of rappers just being honest with themselves, whether you're talking about Common and Mos Def or Nas and 50 cent.

Mostly every form of American music is dead. It's been dead. R&B isn't really good. You got a handful of great guys - Ne-Yo, R. Kelly, Usher. You have a handful of great female artists. But for the most part the music world's changing and change is good. You have to make adjustments if you want to survive in that world. You start to thinking about creative moments - bliss. When everything was all good. You realize that in comparison to the way hip-hop started off, where we should be at right now is not there.

We was different, and that's what made g-funk turn into what it turned into and create a new genre, and open up a lot of doors for other artists to feel free to do that type of stuff.

There's so many things that Kanye does that I agree with and disagree with at times. I just say, 'You're in a different place, and what you're doing is experimental. Nobody's been there in hip-hop.'