Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Life
Gotta
Like
Provide
Word
Words
Living
Mean
Think
Hops
Thinking
Hips

More quotes by Chuck D

Image
If you want to be an artist, truly try to write what you believe, and if you write when you don't believe then you should try to become an actor.
Chuck D
Image
Downloadable music is the biggest musical phenomenon since the Beatles, and the music industry is slow to come to grips with that.
Chuck D
Image
A visit to the hood through a record, or through a video, or through a film, is a lot safer than actually visiting the people in real life. It became a business model. It became a revenue engine that, you know, you can get to the hood without ever going there.
Chuck D
Image
Hip-hop is a part of rock & roll because it comes from DJ culture. DJ culture is the embodiment of all genres and all recorded music, if you actually pay attention to it.
Chuck D
Image
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
Image
So, rather than trying to humbly mix with the rest of the world, we are forcing ourselves upon it. We seem to create conflicts with everyone.
Chuck D
Image
No matter what the name, we're all the same pieces in one big chess game.
Chuck D
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Music and art and culture is escapism, and escapism sometimes is healthy for people to get away from reality. The problem is when they stay there.
Chuck D
Image
The Internet was a saving grace for promoting and exposing, and even creating. It's a parallel world to the music industry that already exists, and I'm glad to be a part of it.
Chuck D
Image
You should be a person inside the world with knowledge of your terrain. And if you lock yourself into the 2,000-by-3,000-square-mile, lower-48 box of the United States, you're going to be frustrated by its limitations. You gotta think outside the box.
Chuck D
Image
Every time something tries to create respect with a machine it crumbles!
Chuck D
Image
My advice to young people is ask older people questions and don't be afraid.
Chuck D
Image
I always tell people that I was fortunate I was able to come in with a group of men. We didn't come into the game with a group of boys. We were young then. So your cats keep you in check.
Chuck D
Image
You can actually take your pain and processes it into some kind of form of art. So I mean, I've easily always been able to do that, but also I've always been able to give myself perspective - or, you know, older people always give you perspective.
Chuck D
Image
Black folks are judged by quantity, not quality. It's a decimal point or figure. How different is that from slavery? There's no moral code, it's just about successful business for America.
Chuck D
Image
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
Image
Public Enemy is the security of the hip-hop party.
Chuck D
Image
When you travel the world, you have to watch and you have to listen. We're not going to come in to Ireland without an understanding that there's a history that's very sensitive.
Chuck D