Chuck d quotes

A lot of artists have been persuaded into doing whatever they can do to gain attention. The media, of course, will position and promote the worst of them to the front page. The sidewalk to crime becomes the marketing campaign. These artists have seen it work and sell millions and millions of records for other artists.

Truth is truth no matter what I think.

You can't take anything with you. So I don't understand this whole psychotic area of greed, I don't get it.

I was inspired by the classic rock radio of the Seventies. They separated Chuck Berry and the Beatles from the Led Zeppelins and Bostons and Peter Framptons of the time. In many ways, classic rock became bigger than mainstream rock.

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.

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.

If you empty, you can be filled up with anything. It could be water or it could be gasoline.

I became tired of submitting my art to a panel of corporate strategists who decide if it meets their standard of what gets into stores or not. It was quite simple for me: they act like judge and jury of my art, and that is unacceptable. I wanted to give it right to the public.

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.

To live a life you love, you must Love the life you live.

If I can't change the people around me, I change the people around me.

Minds are the real estate of the 21st century.

The Internet is one area that I have used pretty effectively to break free of corporate control.

Many have forgotten what we came here for, Never knew or had a clue, so you're on the floor. Just growin' not known' about your past... Now you're lookin' pretty stupid while you're shakin' your ass.

Downloadable music is the biggest musical phenomenon since the Beatles, and the music industry is slow to come to grips with that.

Oh, America is slipping away from the rest of the consciousness of the planet - slipping away.

Government and culture are two diametrically opposed forces - the one blinds and oppresses, the other uplifts and unites.

Find like-minded people and try not to be individualized to the point where you try to fight it all and think about it all on your own.

The powers that be are trying to meld, shape, and corral the culture of hip-hop into another speaking voice for the government.

Your closest and your most dedicated fans will be your ultimate test. They will test you.

No matter what's in your head, you go up into any hospital, up to a terminal ward and it'll smack you right back into reality that, "Hey man, whatever you're dealing with, if it's heavy on your heart and head, you're gonna have to let that go, because there, some people are dealing with unavoidable situations that they can't let go." And then they eventually let those go, so, I mean, that's helpful.

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.

I came from a mother and father who always made me secure in my beliefs, and that's where the love came from.

Public Enemy is the security of the hip-hop party.

I think traveling the world has helped to keep Public Enemy alive. We've never solely depended on the United States.

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.

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.

I wanna go to the clubs and actually have a good time too, but at the same time, when the party's over, I have to go back to the real world and try to figure out who I am.

I think too much of the music industry is for the lawyer and accountant mentality.

I think that revolution means change. And if somebody feels like there's nothing wrong, everything's great even when it ain't, why would they ask for a revolution? Just stick the tubes into me and just pump away.

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.

I think the problem for the future generations is a lot of people ain't takin' the time to look for them and give them their voice, so therefore for their voice to be heard, they gotta bang more pots on the ceiling, so to speak; they gotta do crazy things just to get recognized. I just feel that whenever you don't give a generation some kind of voice, then expect side effects.

I adhere to the philosophy, "I don't care who writes the laws, let me write the songs."

I spread the message of hope and of unity. That's what gets me up in the morning. I can tell you what is wrong, but I can't tell you how to fix it. I'm a raptivist, not a politician. I deal in hope.

You're always looking for somebody to love you, be accepted, and there's the insecurities that are even transmitted through rap. Everyone is trying to aim to please too much. Number one: They're trying to please whoever signed them to a contract. Number two: They're trying to appease a gigantic audience and they get this false magnification of love. I came from a thing which nowadays would be the exception to the rule. I came from a mother and father who always made me secure in my beliefs, and that's where the love came from. Which made me look at everything else as procedure.

All I want is peace and love on this planet. Ain't that how God planned it?

I think the problem for the future generations is a lot of people ain't takin' the time to look for galvanizing artists and give them their voice, so therefore for their voice to be heard, they gotta bang more pots on the ceiling, so to speak; they gotta do crazy things just to get recognized. I just feel that whenever you don't give a generation some kind of voice, then expect side effects.

Never have so many men treated women like our foes. They call 'em hoes, but they might as well call them foes, 'cause you are totally against the existence of somebody who should live their life as an equal human being. If not, any man knows, it's like we're not equal. You know, women are usually a little better than us.

Rap music and rap records used to always be like this: we get one or two shots to a piece cause it was a singles marketplace and when the major record companies saw that it could also handle the sales of the albums then they started to force everybody to expand their topics from 1 to about 10 and you gotta deliver 12 songs, so a lot of times if you took a person who wasn't really developed, and the diversity of trying say 12 different things, you know the companies were like "Cool! Say the same thing 12 different ways."

The minute I get swelled up about something, something has always brought me back down to earth.

No matter what the name, we're all the same pieces in one big chess game.

It's weak to speak and blame somebody else ...When you destroy yourself.

If you go get a passport, it might encourage you to at least consider the world around you.

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.

Slavery was incredibly prosperous for some people, at that time. It was not a bad business plan, but it was terrible and inhumane. But as a business it worked.

People are so confused about race and hip-hop that people didn't even consider the Beastie Boys one of the greatest rap groups of all time because they were white.

Real people do real things. A collective of a whole bunch of people who do things in their own locale, in their own neighborhoods - the sum is bigger than the parts, and the parts will grow.

We don't see the people who are doing real things getting enough props. We often see politicians who are everywhere but nowhere at the same goddamn time. You know the kind of person: You see them everywhere on television but nowhere in front of your face.

If you want to speak about different ethnicities and diversity, rap and hip-hop are all over the planet. Every country, from Turkey to Australia, now has tons of hip-hop artists. The music and artistry have moved way faster than the corporatization of the music. You do need organization and opportunity for these artists to express themselves, and I don't think it has to come from a corporate co-signing.

Excuse us for the news, You might not be amused; But did you know White comes from Black? No need to be confused.

Burn, Hollywood, burn, I smell a riot goin' on, First they're guilty, now they're gone!

Every time something tries to create respect with a machine it crumbles!

You know, it's nothin' quick overnight. If anything happens to you quick, you need to start questioning that. You know, you hear young people go, aw, I'm gonna blow up. You gonna blow up but with a controlled explosion. Don't just blow up all over the place.

Music used to cause revolutions and I'm not seeing much revolution anymore.

I'm not a U.S. citizen. I mean, I'm an earth-izen. Borderline policies are crap to me.

Americans are not sharp. You can be sharp in your own area, I guess, but in this world you gotta be conscious of everybody else in the world too. You just can't be drunken with constitution and hear, okay we're gonna do this and then you hear well, we're gonna go kill this guy 'cause he's a terrorist and you keep gettin' it.

Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and when people start getting it confused, that means they need to sit down with some real people.

My work throughout my life is always representative of the time we live in. It's all about keeping it in order and keeping it in gear.

Young people are having a hard time with what's reality and what's fantasy these days...We created discussion. It wasn't to create controversy for sale's sake, but rather it was my obligation to use the medium for discussion. Nobody's discussing the grown-up topics; they are faking and fronting.

Try to master technology instead of it mastering you.

Reflect each day on all you have to be grateful for and you will receive more to be grateful for.

I'd rather have a hundred thousand or a million people saying I'm nuts and I'm crazy for my musical choices and what I've said lyrically, than a million people all raising their hand on the first day.

I'm recording freely, and if I make a song, I release it immediately, so I'm more likely to believe in one song at a time as opposed to albums.

I encourage more blacks and people of color to get a passport. That's one way to help put people on an equal platform.

Men have periods; they're called wars.

Bigger doesn't mean better unless you really understand what bigger is.

I don't have any exteriors that would actually put me into some kind of different air that would actually intimidate somebody to stay away from me.

You know, you should start to be in plays and things like that. Write some scripts. If you're an artist and you truly don't believe what you're spittin' then you need to really seriously be an actor then.

Our freedom of speech is freedom or death, We got to fight the powers that be!

I'm not a firm believer of "mo' money mo' problems" - I think that's stupid. I think it's that problems are already there that can be exacerbated by more things you don't understand.

The real thing is the heart, you know the heart shouldn't be covered with concrete.

Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps

Share and enjoy the fruits of this planet.

I think governments are the cancer of civilization.

Let the voice be the voice of the voiceless and let it come from the world of rap music to keep the stereotype and the peace at the same time.

McDonald's offers a king's ransom to any hip-hop artist who is able to put Big Mac into a song. MTV - and more to the point, Viacom - is succeeding in extending a teenage life to twenty-nine or even thirty-one years old. It is about extending this market and removing any intelligent substance in the music.

Try to find like-minded people. Don't choose your friends based on the outside, choose your friends based on your similar views or something that you can learn from.

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.

When we worked on Ice Cube's Amerikkka's Most Wanted album. Before we talked studios, beats, or lyrics, I said, "Two rules: Only say what you're able to vouch for. Number two, never repeat yourself twice, because we makin' an album that people will play over and over.

You can't master time, but you have to work your hardest to manage it.

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.

If they can send you to war at 18, maybe it's beneficial for some people to think that most of us gotta go to war for our own existence.

There are too many leaders anointed because they have a public voice - television, radio, or record, or whatever. That even includes myself. In the past, I'd say, 'Don't anoint me when you can anoint yourself.'

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.

I like Rick Ross as a person. I like Jay-Z and Kanye West as people. But I hate the companies that they record for.

Knowledge, wisdom, and understanding don't come out of the microwave. You got to keep moving forward because the evil doesn't sleep.

The best American is one who considers themselves as a citizen of the world.

I'm most passionate about, you know, making everybody understand that we should all have equal access on this earth.

My advice to young people is ask older people questions and don't be afraid.

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.

My thing is, the older you get you gotta stand up for what you believe in, and keep bashin' away.

Once you think bigger than yourself then the cause becomes the issue if you think on a higher plain you can come together to work on our problems.

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.

Cause I'm Black and I'm proud I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps

Most artists are always fighting for their fame. They have that fear, like the saying goes, "out of sight, out of mind." They need to keep themselves out there. I have never had that fear. If I have any fear, it's not doing enough to reach people.

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.

If you have no soul you can gut it out. You know, like a marionette, you'll just follow what seems to actually give you whatever you ain't got.

Rappers should just be able to perform what they create and satisfy the people that like and love them.

Of course voting is useful. But then again, I don’t put a big glow to it. Voting is about as essential as washing yourself. It’s something you’re supposed to do. Now, you can’t go around bragging, expecting to get props because you voted. That’s stupid.

The truth has no form, you know. It's not like walking around trying to actually ask for favors and to be acknowledged, it is what it is.

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.

One side of the street is a Church; across the road is a liquor store. Both of 'em keepin us poor.

Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.

Don't anoint me when you can anoint yourself.

Someone like Jay-Z does have a timeless quality, but it's much different than ours. You can look back at something like "At the Hop" by Danny and the Juniors or the music that was on American Bandstand in the 1950s-'60s.

With black people, there are 50 Hitlers over the course of history.

I don't think a lot of people have been privy to understanding that there's this talent in hip-hop all over the earth that's just as good. It's just that everything out of the U.S. proclaims to be the best, especially L.A. and New York, being that they're the nerve centers and media capitals of the most predominantly media-emitting country in the world.

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.

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.

The best medicine for pain sometimes is some kind of logic and common sense from older folks. They tell you, "Okay, you're not the only one who actually went through this."

Comin' from the school of hard knocks, Some perpetrate...they drink Clorox. Attack the black, cause I know they lack exact The cold facts, and still they try to Xerox.

Music should be some kind of nourishment.

I have to be conscious of what I'm sayin' because people are gonna come at me about this sh*t.

These days you can't see who's in cahoots, Cause now the KKK wears three-piece suits.

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?

I got a letter from the government the other day I opened and read it...it said they were suckers.

I think a good thing that needs to change is that people should be at least fearless about expressin' themselves.

I don't believe that everybody is out of some kind of cookie cutter, so the thing that protects me is always being level with myself, even to myself.

I think right about now we have to beware of marketed Malcolms and Martins. Real people do real things.

Try to do your best to look people in the eye and talk to them without a gadget being in between you all the time.

And when I say it, they get alarmed... 'Cause I'm louder than a bomb.

The best way to boycott is to build your own

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.

One of the problems with hip hop is lack of infrastructure and not being able to control its own course. I don't like that hip hop is full of infantile 35-year-olds. Hip hop cannot afford to be lazy.

I always remain optimistic. There are three levels of music production: the majors, indies, and what I call "inties," music distributed via the Internet. The Internet is one area that I have used pretty effectively to break free of corporate control.