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.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

My best country record only sold 200,000 copies.

You get to a certain age, and you are forbidden access. You’re not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines; you’re not going to get played on radio, and you’re not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

I’m going to change the way martial arts is viewed. I’m going to change the game. I’m going to change the way people approach fighting.

One of the reasons I connect to the Super Bowl is that I approach my shows like an athlete.

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

If I tried to make a commercial album, it would be a complete flop. I have no idea what the world at large likes.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

Hollywood has a way of making everything seem like an overnight success.

I seen a lot of artists be hot for a minute, and then that’s it, and somebody else come in.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

Celebrity is ridiculous and silly and it’s mad that people like me are listened to – you know, rap stars and movie stars.

I think, first of all, I don’t think people understand Ice Cube’s body of work. Ice Cube is a, and I hate to use the word ‚urban‘ but – when you think of Judd Apatow, and a person who’s launched so many careers, Ice Cube has done that for so many comedians, you know?

The wage for most musicians is a modest amount, and that includes me some of the time.

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

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

I did the Ed Sullivan show four times. I did the Steve Allen show. I did the Jackie Gleason show.

I respect Soulja Boy.

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.

I stopped watching TV because of ‚The Wire.‘ Like, ‚The Wire‘ ruined everything for me because I don’t even want to watch anything else now.

I want to be an executive producer.

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

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

When I was on TV in the ’80s, I wasn’t thinking, ‚There’s a 10-year-old kid watching this and in 15 years, he’s gonna be doing stuff that was influenced by me.‘ I was trying to get my five minutes together. So now that those people are comedians and they’re influenced by me – it’s bizarre.

Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

I think Kenny Chesney or Garth Brooks would be the coolest duet partners. I look up to them so much for their work ethics.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment.

When you’re a pop star, it’s a little conservative; you always have to stay in a box. You have fans that are five and fans that are 65; there are so many people wanting so many things.

There’s something missing in the music industry today… and it’s music. Songs you hear don’t last, it’s just product fed to you by the industry.

In those days, the early 1980s, TV and film were interchangeable.

I don’t think the money people in Hollywood have ever thought I was normal, but I am dedicated to my work and that’s what counts.

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, ‚Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we’ll talk.‘

Film is a very tight little box. If you don’t fit in that box, you’re gone. Television, there’s more room to move around.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I’ve never been interested in that.

Only the public can make a star. It’s the studios who try to make a system out of it.

Partnering with Atlantic Records creates the opportunity to take what we’re doing to the next level, without compromising.

Rock music is niche.

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

I wanna thank MTV and the VMAs for choosing me to be a part of the show because, on this show, if you not an icon or upcomin‘ icon, you’re not on the show, you know?

Apple has given me a platform to spread music. They’re giving us Latinos a chance to shine.

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.‘

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 can’t deny that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist needs it.

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 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.

In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo.

Probably the reason it’s a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you’re getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you’re going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there’s a kind of bundle.

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 TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

I think the first thing you should know is that nobody in country music ‚made it‘ the same way. It’s all different. There’s no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.

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.

It’s no secret that we were sticking just about every nickel we had on the chance that people would really be interested in something totally new and unique in the field of entertainment.

I know I’m more on television, and I’m more recognisable than maybe even the players because they run and train, but I just stand there, and my face does all these funny things that everyone can see all the time.

There are a lot of conservative people, a lot of moderate people, Republicans, Democrats, in Hollywood. It is just that the conservative people by the nature of the word itself play closer to the vest. They do not go around hot dogging it.