Quotes About Hip Hop Culture

#1. For me, growing up in hip-hop culture, it's all about having the next style, the new fashion, the new way to express yourself, the fly new beat. I can't sit still; I have no nostalgia. I don't have to have nostalgia.

El-P

#2. Body piercing and baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines.

Michael Eric Dyson

#3. My shows will always be inspired by hip hop culture and my upbringing within it.

Doc Brown

#4. Hip-hop culture is deeply rooted in the wrong things. Hip-hop is about drugs right now. It's more so about drugs - about selling drugs, about using drugs - it's bad for kids.

Vince Staples

#5. As much as I would like to be the one who saved hip-hop culture, it's pretty much nigh-on impossible.

Coolio

#6. Ballet was exactly what I was searching for, but my environment definitely made me the dancer and the person that I am today. And the Hip-Hop culture was a big part of it.

Misty Copeland

#7. Locally lived hip-hop culture that is giving many of America's youth the tool they need to survive and thrive in America, in the face of public policy that have written too many young people off.

Bakari Kitwana

#8. How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white.

Afrika Bambaataa

#9. 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.

Yelawolf

#10. House, rap, R&B, disco rock, they are all part of hip-hop culture. Why you ain't playing Kraftwerk along with Jay-Z? That's hip-hop.

Afrika Bambaataa

#11. Hip hop culture has done more for race relations in American than anything since Martin Luther King. And I really believe that.

Steve Stoute

#12. My father was a musician, and I've always loved writing. I grew up in New York City during a time when hip hop music was surrounding you with the hip hop culture, and it felt natural. I was a really huge fan of the music.

El-P

#13. If you watch wrestling, you now know the hip-hop culture is being represented with wrestling. For the longest time, the cultures have almost been parallel.

John Cena

#14. Cutting and pasting is the essence of what hip-hop culture is all about for me. It's about drawing from what's around you, and subverting it and decontextualizing it.

DJ Shadow

#15. I think it's a tribute to the artistic importance of hip-hop culture and what hip-hop has brought into music and fashion and jewelry that it is being adapted or imitated or is inspiring variations or new types of art or new types of music.

Simon De Pury

#16. Puffy's contribution to hip-hop culture was the remix. He offered us the music that his mom played in front of him, with newer drums and younger artists. That worked, and will consistently be there. The remix comes right after the original record, that's something Puffy did to influence the culture.

Curtis Jackson

#17. When you talk about rap you have to understand that rap is part of the Hip-Hop culture.

Afrika Bambaataa

#18. At the end of the day, you want to be always the one that's one step ahead of everybody, and when it comes to hip-hop, culture and art, you want to be that signature guy.

Carmelo Anthony

#19. The competitive nature of hip-hop culture has always had battling involved with it. So you battle with the other artist but not necessarily in business and everywhere else.

Curtis Jackson

#20. For me, graffiti writers were always the fascinating eccentrics of hip-hop culture. What they do is secretive by definition, and not remunerative in any way.

Adam Mansbach

#21. If blues culture had developed under the conditions of oppressive, forced labor, hip-hop culture would arise from the conditions of no work

Jeff Chain

#22. Hip-hop culture is probably one of the most powerful things to come out of America in a long time - everything from the music to the art to the dance to the language.

Will.i.am

#23. I know about hip-hop culture, whether it's graffiti writing or DJ-ing or being an MC.

Josh Peck

#24. I don't care what anybody says, there's nothing like the cultural influence of hip-hop. For me, hip-hop culture is involved in everything - it's in me, in who I am, in how I dress, how I talk. It's in my son and my wife.

Chris Paul

#25. What I feel with the best of hip-hop music and with the best of what has been produced by hip-hop culture is that it's going to be timeless, and it's going to last.

Simon De Pury

#26. Wherever I go, I bring the culture with me, so that they can understand that it's attainable. I didn't do it any other way than through hip-hop.

Jay-Z

#27. Hip-hop is a beautiful culture. It's inspirational, because it's a culture of survivors. You can create beauty out of nothingness.

Mos Def

#28. It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#29. Hopeful dreams - even where crack kings' and dope fiends feast. Dust from the ash and rubble; they shine like bright stars once the mic is gripped and the bars are spit.

T.F. Hodge

#30. 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.

KRS-One

#31. The powers that be are trying to meld, shape, and corral the culture of hip-hop into another speaking voice for the government.

Chuck D

#32. I identified with white culture, and I wanted to fit in. I didn't identify with black culture. Like, I didn't like Tyler Perry movies, and I wasn't into hip-hop music. I liked Neil Young.

Zoe Kravitz

#33. Hip-hop is more than music, it's a culture. It's bigger than hit songs.

Nelly

#34. The moment I made that decision to get in the studio and actually work and study the culture of hip-hop, then everything just started to open up and blossom for me.

Kendrick Lamar

#35. I grew up on Hip Hop, it's the music I love and it's the music I respect. I respect the culture ... that's me.

Eminem

#36. People of color grow up steeped in 'white' culture. The reverse is not true. And, no, listening to hip-hop on the way to work does not count as immersion.

John Ridley

#37. HIP-HOP HAS DIFFERENT ELEMENTS DEALING WITH MUSIC, RAP, GRAFFITI ART, B-BOYS (WHAT YOU CALL BREAK BOYS) ... AND ALSO DEALING WITH CULTURE, AND A WHOLE MOVEMENT DEALING WITH WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING, AS WELL AS PEACE UNITY AND FUN.

Afrika Bambaataa

#38. Rap is a gimmick, but I'm for the hip-hop, the culture.

Method Man

#39. Hip-hop and electronic music are so similar, in the fact that they're both very visceral, have so much bass; a lot of times, it's the same tempos. The culture and some of the sound design is different but a lot of times, it's the same stuff.

Skrillex

#40. Graffiti has an interesting relationship to the broader world of hip-hop: It's part of the culture, but also in a weird way a stepchild of the culture.

Adam Mansbach

#41. Hip-hop is a part of rock & roll because it comes from DJ culture. DJ culture is the embodiment of all genres and all recorded music, if you actually pay attention to it.

Chuck D

#42. There is genuine Hip Hop; a message that connects, rocks a crowd, and motivates a people and then there is what is left ... instead of Hip Hop we have Hip replacement.

Johnnie Dent Jr.

#43. There's a small group of guys in hip-hop that really have money. The whole culture talks about money, but it's a small group that actually has it.

Curtis Jackson

#44. Hip hop - it's an art form but it's a culture as well. You grow up in the culture and you never leave it. It's a style of dress; it's a way of thought. I always grew up in the culture, and it was part of who I was and I carried it into every world I was in.

LeCrae

#45. Wrestling has grown so big ... it's almost a culture. And it's a culture of all types of vibes, just like hip-hop has all kinds of vibes and rap has all kinds of vibes.

Jam Master Jay

#46. When I graduated, I was going to go to school for law, but had such an affinity for hip-hop. It was like walking into a casino and I decided to bet everything on hip-hop, and I hit! My hit wasn't just a hit for me, it was a hit for everyone in this culture.

Doug E. Fresh

#47. Hip-hop is such a wide statement of culture that everyone is not the same, and it's impossible to put it into one box.

Russell Simmons

#48. To its credit, hip-hop is my favorite genre, to this day, and it's hard not to be influenced by the culture and by the movement of it and by the soul of it.

Miguel

#49. I think hip hop is dead. It's all pop now. If you call it hip hop, then you need to stop. Hip hop was a movement. Hip hop was a culture. Hip hop was a way of life. It's all commercial now.

Tracy Morgan

#50. Wigger: a young white who wants desperately to be down with hip-hop, who identifies more strongly with Black culture than white. (What's disturbing about this expression is its racist implications: if white kids down with hip-hop are "wiggers," what does that make Black kids down with hip-hop?)

Bakari Kitwana

#51. The difference is that they [Europeans] don't have that culture about hip-hop as a lifestyle, a way of life; for them it's more of the new trend, the new music that you have to like.

K-Maro

#52. I want to plug back into the hip-hop audience. Whether it be fans who grew up watching 'Yo!', or people who have become familiar with the culture via the Internet.

Fab Five Freddy

#53. Rap is just a movement within the larger culture of hip-hop.

Cornel West

#54. But even more important, I think hip-hop has bridged the culture gap. It brings white kids together with Black kids, brown kids with yellow kids. They all have something in common that they love. It gets past the stereotypes and people hating each other because of those stereotypes. People

Jeff Chang

#55. Hip Hop will always have a lane of its own, for those that appreciate the culture.

Iceberg Slim

#56. Like any great art, the culture of hip-hop has changed with the times. With the state of technology, music is more accessible and freely exchanged. For hip-hop to grow while keeping a sense of integrity, the essence of the culture has to be handed down and respected like any high form of art.

One9

#57. Bob Marley performed the 'One Love Peace' concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There's always been that in black music and culture in general. It's no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what's going on in black life. It's not unusual for hip-hop.

Mos Def

#58. 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.

Steve Stoute

#59. Blues, rock and hip hop are more about a lifestyle and culture than notes on a page.

Jake Shimabukuro

#60. While the patriarchal boys in hip-hop crew may talk about keeping it real, there has been no musical culture with black men at the forefront of its creation that has been steeped in the politics of fantasy and denial as the more popular strands of hip-hop.

Bell Hooks

#61. Everyone who raps isn't hip-hop. To be hip-hop, you've got to know the culture. You got to know the history.

Ice-T

#62. Hip-hop is a competition culture. It's based around, "My DJ is better than you. My graffiti artist is better than you."

Ice-T

#63. Hip hop has always been, for us, for artists who are pure to the craft - any place overseas, whether it's Australia, any place in Asia, Germany, Africa, it becomes something where you can still go and work. Hip hop is an import culture. We're spoiled by it here. It's homegrown.

Talib Kweli

#64. 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.

Afrika Bambaataa

#65. Hip-hop, this thing we love that loves us back, is our lingua franca.

Raquel Cepeda

#66. Hip-hop and being a pro athlete go hand in hand. When they come together, it's a win, not just for your business brand but also for culture.

Kendrick Lamar

#67. Hip-hop is storytelling.

Raquel Cepeda

#68. I grew up in the suburbs, and I listened to hip-hop for the right reasons, which was to understand a culture that was beyond mine, and to understand what was going on in places outside of my sheltered bubble.

Jensen Karp

#69. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Jason Whitlock

#70. It's no doubt that there's a connection (between the blues and hip-hop). Hip-hop is definitely a child of the blues. And I think you gotta know the roots to really grow. It's like knowing your parents, it's like knowing your culture, so you could be proud of that culture and take it to the world.

Common

#71. Pop culture mirrored the segregation.

Jeff Chain

#72. I write pop songs. But I think it is sprinkled with a lot of counter-culture references. It ranged from rap to hip hop to trip hop, house, drum and bass, and experimental and improv and jazz.

Nelly Furtado

#73. They [US Administration] have exploited hip-hop and some of the culture around it - magazines, videos, etc. - to recruit people into the military. The Army says it will give out Hummers, platinum teeth, or whatever to those that actually join.

Chuck D

#74. As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.

Moby

#75. When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion.

T.F. Hodge

#76. To have mentors and moguls like Russell Simmons and Chuck D pushing me forward and empowering my movement makes me all the more eager to continue pursuing my dream to make my mark on hip hop music and culture.

Lazarus Of Bethany

#77. Hip Hop is thee dominant youth culture in the world right now.

Kurtis Blow

#78. I heard Q-Tip on the Jungle Brothers' song 'The Promo.' It was very exciting. It was very new. The music and the culture around hip-hop was evolving. I think there's an emotional quality to their music and there's a vulnerability to the music. For me, A Tribe Called Quest was my Beatles.

Michael Rapaport

#79. Although I grew up as a fan of the culture from the disco D.J. era as a young kid and hearing the beginnings of hip-hop, I'm hearing it all from another borough in Brooklyn.

Fab Five Freddy

#80. All music now is influenced by Hip Hop. It's so deeply ingrained in the culture.

Aeriel Miranda

#81. Street culture is punk, hip-hop, skateboarding, surfing, graffiti. It's like a massive global culture that is all tied together. But for so many years it was very geographic.

Jeffrey Deitch

#82. I'm someone that examines culture and tries to break down why things are the way that they are whether its hip-hop music, sex, race, or consumerism. I try to examine it and scrutinize it to the point where I can write a song.

Macklemore

#83. Hip-hop is not something we do, it's something we live. It's the way we dress, the way we talk ... everybody bobbing to the same beat. It's a culture, and you have to find your own place in that culture. Top 10 or Top 40 can't dictate that. They can only dictate what's marketable.

Erykah Badu

#84. Hip-hop is a complex music and culture that has been reduced to a one-dimensional critique. Hip-hop's messages aren't all bad. Neither are they all good.

Bakari Kitwana