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.

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.

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.‘

Hip hop has always been braggin‘ and boasting and ‚I’m better at you than this‘ and ‚I’m better at you than that.‘

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

Snoop ain’t never cosigned me, but I know everybody is like, ‚That’s the next Snoop.‘ Nah, I’m Nipsey, and I got to work to define myself.

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.

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

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.

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.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

Gospel music is never pessimistic, it’s never ‚oh my god, its all going down the tubes‘, like the blues often is.

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.

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

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

Reggaeton is a global genre.

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

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.‘

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.

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

The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.

‚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.

One of the things people don’t really recognise about the similarities between country and hip-hop is that they’re celebrations of pride in a lifestyle.

Rap was my drug.

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

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.

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

Rock music is niche.

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.

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.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

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

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.

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

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.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

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.

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.

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.

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

Kanye West is my favorite artist.

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

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

Actually, I hear a lot of rock music. My husband is a big rock fan.

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.

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

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.

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.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

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.

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

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

I like Cardi B!

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.