If you’re going to write about rap music and hip-hop, and you don’t love it, then we don’t need your opinion, and we revoke your opinion.

Rock music is niche.

In 2013, the week before I dropped ‚Crenshaw,‘ ‚Complex‘ wrote an article that said that Nipsey Hussle is one of the top 25 underperforming artists. I was so offended that I responded with my own opinion about these journalists – their point of view is not validated in our culture.

Reggaeton is a global genre.

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

Trap is new. It didn’t start yesterday, but when I was 5, it didn’t exist – not even in the U.S. I’ve evolved with the music.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

My fans love me for me, my beats, my rhymes.

For the chorus of ‚Secrets,‘ we used The Romantics‘ ‚Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‚Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.

I like Cardi B!

I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It’s the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.

I was looking for something a lot heavier, yet melodic at the same time. Something different from heavy metal, a different attitude.

My parents were fairly young in the city of Compton. So the things that they played – you know, that was the hip crowd. So I was being exposed to all these ideas, from Big Daddy Kane to Eazy-E to the Bay Area – Too Short, E-40 – you know, back to Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers.

Rap was my drug.

There’s been people who’ve rapped and produced – like Kanye – but I don’t feel like on the rapping side there’s ever been a producer who can rap as good as I think I can rap.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.

No, there’s something about the sing-song cadence of children’s music that has its place in rock.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

I think Ye is important to hip-hop.

Folk music is a bunch of fat people.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.

I used to really love Fiend, but he stopped. He just stopped. Every time he had a project, every project – ‚There’s One In Every Family,‘ ‚Street Life‘ – I had to have them. And he just stopped. And that was disappointing, ‚cause that was my favorite rapper at one time.

Reggaeton is something else – it is part of pop culture. It is something very big that I don’t believe will ever die.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.

This is the thing about hip-hop music and where people get it most misconstrued: It’s all hip-hop. You can’t say that just what I do is hip-hop, because hip-hop is all energies. James Brown can get on the track and mumble all day. But guess what? You felt his soul on those records.

Alternative R&B is in my soul. It’s not going anywhere.

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.

You don’t hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.

Biggie Smalls, Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem, Big L, Tupac. That was, like, my top five, generally.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you’re always going to find a hip-hop tape; that’s all I buy, that’s all I live, that’s all I listen to, that’s all I love.

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

Being a student of hip-hop in general, you take technical aspects from places. You may take a rhyme pattern or flow from Big Daddy Kane or Kool G Rap.

Sometimes you have the trends that’s not that cool. You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don’t really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after awhile. It’s really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it.

In hip-hop, there’s not a lot of love. There’s not a lot of love being spread. It’s always like ‚I’m stuntin‘ on you raps, or I’m better than you raps.‘ It’s not a lot of ‚Yo man, I idolize you raps.‘

People like bluegrass. It’s had a following amongst a lot of hip and young people. A lot of college kids like bluegrass.

I’m pretty sure in my older years, I’ll be doing old-time flavored folk-mountain music.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

Kanye West is my favorite artist.

Look at Pusha-T. He makes a certain type of rap music. ‚Daytona‘ is that on the highest level.

I’m just changing the game because I know what the fans want and the people want ‚cause I’m a fan of hip-hop.

Rhyme patterns are nothing without meanings to the words. A lot of rappers can do those flows, but the raps aren’t really about anything – which is cool sometimes, but to have the flow and the message is one of my favorite things.

I always wanted to operate at the highest altitude, just in terms of hip-hop and the music.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It’s when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

The effect of music on fashion has been immense, especially hip-hop and urban music.

My records are borderline dance records. They’ve got a real electro-rock heart and soul, and the vibe of the sentiment is pop, but there’s a lot of people that were like, ‚This is a dance record.‘

It’s an honor for me to represent urban music, reggaeton, trap and hip-hop.

Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

I now possess the tools as a producer and a songwriter to really just go out and make smashes all day long. I could make an album full of smash records that got pop appeal. But my heart is in hip-hop. My heart is in telling stories. And it’s like therapy for me.