Urban Expression Quotes

Hip-hop is a vehicle.

Hip-hop started with street poets with great lyrical skills, and that's what hip-hop has always been about for me.

Graffiti's always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then they scrub it off.

Hip-hop is the last true folk art.

Although you might have to creep about at night and lie to your mum it’s actually one of the more honest art forms available. There is no elitism or hype, it exhibits on the best walls a town has to offer and nobody is put off by the price of admission.

I think a lot of people can learn from listening to hip hop. It ain't always about beats and rhymes.

Hip-hop became the voice of rebellion and the youth, as rock music did in the '60s.

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.

Hip-hop originated from the Bronx specifically; that means everything. I'm down the block from where hip-hop was born and raised, so I'm glad I am here and I'm able to represent New York the way I am.

We were coming out of the black community with this thing called rap music, which was basically black men yelling at the top of their lungs about what we liked and what we didn't like. It was disturbing to the status quo. It really shook things up. And those in power didn't know what to make of us, but they knew that we had to be silenced, stopped in any way from expressing our outrage.

Hip-hop is about tearing down the system to better it, tearing down the system to better themselves. No matter how flimsy it might seem, they always wanted the finer things in life.

Graffiti writers will never stop. They'll just evolve. It's interesting what ideas people come up with and how it all extends forward.

Skateboarding is a part of Hip-Hop culture. I think it's the fifth element of Hip-Hop - emceeing, deejaying, b-boying, graffiti, and skateboarding. Skateboarders live and die on the streets. It's expression - it's everything that Hip-Hop is.

PnB is like a movement, a whole movement is going on.

Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.

We want to show how hip-hop, which kind of fuels today's basketball stars, is directly related to jazz.

Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they're having a piss.

Hip-hop is not about crime. Hip-hop is not about being a gangster.

For me, graffiti means making marks on surfaces using just about anything, be it markers, spray, paint, chalk, lipstick, varnish, ink. Or it can be the result of scratches and incisions. The aim is to maintain the energy created by disturbance or excitement in the street.

Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.

L.A. streets aren't just paved real estate but a cosmology, a manifestation of the city's sensibility.

Everyone has the notion that hip-hop is messy and loose, but there's also another level to it.