Chuck D Quotes about Hip Hop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

It ain't this big I, little You. Music is to be shared. Music is not a hustle. [Hip hop's become] cultural stripmining [by the major labels]. Some people get into this music to make a killing but music is a way to make a living.

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.

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

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

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.

The biggest thing that has happened to hip-hop is the clinging on to the corporation as the all-mighty hub of the music.

It's not about what you get out but what you put into hip hop as a genre.

I never live alone, I never walk alone. My posse's always ready And they're waitin' in my zone.