Quote

Being positive is like going up a mountain. Being negative is like sliding down a hill. A lot of times, people want to take the easy way out, because it's basically what they've understood throughout their lives.

Chuck D

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Chuck D
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: August 1
Composer
Journalist
Musician
Radio Personality
Rapper
Record Producer
Singer
Television Producer
Writer
New York City
New York
Carlton Douglas Ridenhour
Take
Basically
Going
Mountain
Way
Negative
Like
Understood
People
Positive
Sliding
Times
Hill
Lives
Hills
Easy
Throughout

More quotes by Chuck D

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Ever since I was a teenager, I was always kind of, like, checking myself. You know, like, Come on man, don't get your head all swollen. Life and time itself will give you perspective on what you're doing. So, that's actually what's always been a reminder in my own head.
Chuck D
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The powers that be are trying to meld, shape, and corral the culture of hip-hop into another speaking voice for the government.
Chuck D
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I'm envious of the way that electronic dance music has organised itself. It has been able to understand what it ain't rather than what it is. And I think that slipped away from hip-hop as soon as the DJs lost the majority of the say so in the direction of the music.
Chuck D
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To live a life you love, you must Love the life you live.
Chuck D
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I totally hate when somebody takes a classic and desecrates it. I like Jimmy Page and P. Diddy, but what they did to 'Kashmir' was a debacle.
Chuck D
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Rap comes from the humble beginnings of rebelling against the status quo. Now, rappers have become the status quo themselves. You can't rebel against the Queen and then become the Queen yourself. I attribute much of the blame to testosterone-male dominance and patriarchy.
Chuck D
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Reflect each day on all you have to be grateful for and you will receive more to be grateful for.
Chuck D
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I think hip hop should be a living word. And what I mean by the living word is like yo, you gotta have the words that provide life.
Chuck D
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Rappers should just be able to perform what they create and satisfy the people that like and love them.
Chuck D
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Culture is this thing that we can exchange among ourselves as human beings to knock aside our differences and build upon our similarities. Cultural exchange is the ultimate exchange.
Chuck D
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As a late teenager, the punk movement pushed me further. In particular, the Clash, which happened to leak through the time of disco, showed me that there was this cross-cultural sound that could cut across genres and audiences. Like punk was to disco, rap music was a rebellion against R&B, which had adopted disco and made it worse.
Chuck D
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Getting on the road and driving along a road at night, or even in the daytime and seeing the oceans or whatever, is always liberating.
Chuck D
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Where else can you go with respect to the work, lyrics, and message of the music? If you are past high school age, you can get by with saying very little the first or second time around. However, after a while you know you are going to have to say something beyond high school stuff.
Chuck D
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Truth is truth no matter what I think.
Chuck D
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When culture is created in boardrooms with a panel of six or seven strategists for the masses to follow, to me that is no different than an aristocracy. It's not created from the people in the middle of the streets, so to speak. It is created from a petri dish for the sake of making money, and it is undermining the longevity of the culture.
Chuck D
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Men have periods they're called wars.
Chuck D
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When somebody greedily comes along and thinks that they gonna snatch everything, and you have so many people that have not, the passion that drives me is trying to make them understand that they have to share. So, my art reflects that the whole reason I do what I do reflects that.
Chuck D
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I let go usually by talking to many people in different areas, in different realms of life that make me look at what I'm dealing with as being small fries stuff, you know?
Chuck D
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Bass! How low can you go? Death row...what a brother know. Once again, back is the incredible, The rhyme animal, the uncannable D! Public Enemy Number One. Five-O said, Freeze! and I got numb. Can I tell 'em that I really never had a gun? But it's the wax that the Terminator X spun.
Chuck D
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Downloadable music is the biggest musical phenomenon since the Beatles, and the music industry is slow to come to grips with that.
Chuck D