I'm a thug. And my thug comes from... my definition of thug comes from half of the street element. Straight street hustling.
Hip-hop is really standoffish. It's really competitive and it's really about who's number one all the time. Sometimes it gets out of hand.
B.G. was just like his lyrics.
Too many guys are over here begging for people and trying to chase people to fight, this and that, begging for money fights. You become your own damn money fight.
I knew the profanity used up and down my street would not go over the air... So I trained myself to say 'Holy Cow' instead.
With rap music, because it's all so on the street, you get treated like a street cat: "All right, you've been eatin' enough, you're fat, get out of the way now and let somebody else come by."
I'm the greatest game-spitter of all time. I talk about the swell, the block, the 'hood. I'm a street commentator. I narrate how people live. That's E-40.
My momma didn't clean up floors so I could be a thug... so I could wear my pants down.
A lot of times, when people say hip-hop, they don't know what they're talking about. They just think of the rappers. When you talk about hip-hop, you're talking about the whole culture and movement. You have to take the whole culture for what it is.
I feel like your city - with hip hop in particular, because we're always beating our chest and shouting where we're from - your city is just as influential as your parents. Even the grimy, hardcore gangster rap from New York - KRS-One and Wu Tang, the stuff acknowledges it.
When I was a teenager, you wanted to go to the movies. Go and see 'Mean Streets,' go and see 'The Conversation,' go and see 'Taxi Driver.'
Hip-hop was fast, originally. It was always fast music.
I spend a fair amount of time chatting to black cab drivers in London.
There is a level of appreciation for brothers and sisters in the hood.
There was no hip-hop before Afrika Bambaataa.
Hip-hop was started on groups.
I was not an athlete, but I was a break-dancer. I was a beatboxer, an entertainer.
Ninety percent of the general public aren't gangstas, so all of the rappers aren't going to be gangstas.
Should graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: It's way more important than that.
Hip-hop is a worldwide culture. We have permeated every urban environment.
You seen my shows; I bring the 'hood out.
Just growing up in Harlem, it didn't matter what you had to do to get fresh - you would do it.
Growing up, I absolutely loved skateboarding and dirt bike riding with my brother and the neighborhood kids.
Where I'm from is like 'Hustle & Flow' versus '8 Mile.' It's that really grimy, box-Chevy, dope-boy, working-class music.
I used to MC a bit when I was young - 14 or 15 years old.
