Hip-hop saved me. It gave me permission to use language in a certain way. It validated my community and my friends. It gave our slang a certain elegance.
Rap music came along and saved my life. I started to tell the stories of the streets and that was my way out.
Rhyme is cool again. It's because of hip-hop. Bless you, hip-hop.
I would describe Los Angeles as actually not having taste. In New York, there's taste. But you have to remember that taste is censorship. It's a form of restriction.
I've always been in love with Melbourne. When I was 12, I was taken into the city by my grandmother to go to the ballet for the first time.
I can't give up. It's a rap thang. And I ain't goin back to the crack game.
I'll just walk around New York and watch people on the streets.
I realized how far-reaching the effect of hip hop was when I walked by a jewelry store named Bling in a small, rural town in France. Hip hop has made a huge impact on urban culture. Yet many brands still don't speak to young people in a tone and manner that's representative of them.
As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.
As a 13-year-old fan of horror fiction, I hadn't seen too many cities in the literature I loved. It was always small towns, or backwoods locales, or maybe the suburbs.
I didn't come from a traditional Tory background; it was urban and metropolitan.
I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.
I'm an urban act.
In L.A., you have to drive; in New York, you can do it on foot. The variety, the potential, of people is in your face. Like any good creator, you want to steal everything.
I have enjoyed the years enormously in Cleveland and especially in Baltimore.
I grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut - during the school time of year - but I preferred it in New Hampshire. I preferred the culture, the landscape, the relative solitude. I've always loved it.
Los Angeles is great for partying and also for its sights and sounds.
Los Angeles has always been very supportive of us.
I've always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the '80s it was a surprise to me.
There is a level of appreciation for brothers and sisters in the hood.
I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.
I'm an immigrant - I've got to be in the city: London, Vienna, or Rome, but always a city.
Definitely just growing up in general influenced me; Detroit happened to be where I was. I feel like the city definitely has made an impact on my life and made me who I am. Detroit has an unmistakable soul - nobody can duplicate the soul we bring to the game. From Motown to J Dilla to Eminem to anything.
Hip-hop was started on groups.
For me, L.A. was, and is, a very creative place to be.
