When we say, 'Look, Donald Trump was a friend to hip hop back in the day; so was Bill Clinton,' It doesn't mean that because he was a friend to hip hop back in the day, that the same Bill Clinton wasn't at the lead of this mass incarceration of African Americans today.
This is the problem with the United States: there's no leadership. A leader would say, 'Police brutality is an oxymoron. There are no brutal police. The minute you become brutal you're no longer police.' So, what, we're not dealing with police. We're dealing with a federally authorized gang.
Self-management and self-control are the keys to advanced knowledge, and both are difficult to learn without a sense of your own cultural identity.
Illiteracy causes violence. If you don't have enough words in your vocabulary, you can't even seek your way out of a situation.
If you vote for evil, you are evil yourself.
I'm here to inspire young people to be part of the most magnificent culture on earth: hip-hop.
The only time you had blacks, whites, and Latinos jamming together was in hip-hop. It's an unsung history.
The truth is nobody was a Muslim until Public Enemy came out. Then, everybody was Muslim this and Muslim that. It's a bandwagon thing. Islam is a way of life... it's a religion. It's not just something you put on a record.
I came from the heart of the ghetto - there ain't no suburbia in me.
When you seek to do something, if you don't know the whole game plan, you're usually going to work against yourself.
Rap is something you live; hip hop is something you do.
Religion and God are totally separate. Religion is created by government. God is God.
When you're not attached to anything, nothing can harm you. When people become attached, they can be harmed. I know this, so I don't attach myself to anything, really.
Hip Hop is an extension of our very being, and so the study of Hip Hop is the study of self-expression leading to the study of one's true self.
Only love is consistent because only love is unconditional.
The Temple of Hip-Hop makes sure that we don't just approach hip-hop just through music or through rap. We approach the totality of hip-hop.
People say I contradict myself because I come gangsta and teach at the same time. I don't want to be too much on either side, but I do want to speak to all audiences.
I would say my flow is Aboriginal. Look at my face, nose, lips, and eyes.
Hip-hop is not about crime. Hip-hop is not about being a gangster.
I find it fascinating how hip hop as a culture mirrors every mythology from the beginning of mythology. The concept of the single mother and child - the Madonna concept. Hip-hoppers were raised in that.
