“Hip-hop is a young man's game, so you have to be in the know. You have to be present.”— André Lauren Benjamin
“You could be a kid from the ghetto, you could have no education, you could be a dropout, but if you had a rhyme and a beat, you could be a star.”— Kurtis Blow
“The hip-hop community is made up of a lot of hustlers. Everybody is trying to get theirs, and everybody is trying to eat.”— Christopher 'Ludacris' Bridges
“You don't have to be a certain thing to be a rapper. You don't have to be from a certain place.”— Christopher 'Ludacris' Bridges
“I'm not a 'conscious' rapper... all rappers are conscious. That's a silly adjective to attach to a rapper.”— Mos Def
“The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been silenced.”— Mos Def