Role Models

"I think I'm a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it's authority that I respect."
~Tupac Shakur






"The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with."
~Talib Kweli




"A certain administration which I won't call by name took the arts out of the schools, and that left the brothers out on the street with nothing, so they went to the turntables and started rhyming. Then they had a way to express themselves, and that's the birth of hip-hop."
~Isaac Hayes





"Don't you want to know what's real and what's not? I remember when I was a kid, you know, this whole Cold War thing. They had us scared of the Russians. So, it's almost like, what's real and what's not?"
~Queen Latifah



"We used to talk about wanting to get some money, but that's when hip-hop was based on your dreams and your fantasy. The whole thing now is the dreams and fantasies were achieved, and you don't want to make it the focal point. You can't keep beating that dead horse."
~Puff Daddy




"I'm forever learning and that's why I'm always able to create new styles and new dimensions of hip-hop."
~Doug E. Fresh









"Hip-Hop isn't just music, it is also a spiritual movement of the blacks! You can't just call Hip-Hop a trend!
"~Lauryn Hill