KRS-One
Self-management and self-control are the keys to advanced knowledge, and both are difficult to learn without a sense of your own cultural identity.Collection: Knowledge
The only time you had blacks, whites, and Latinos jamming together was in hip-hop. It's an unsung history.Collection: History
I think music should be free. I think all communication should be free. I think people should respect artists, and there should be a certain respect for artists who give their music away for free.Collection: Communication
The truth is nobody was a Muslim until Public Enemy came out. Then, everybody was Muslim this and Muslim that. It's a bandwagon thing. Islam is a way of life... it's a religion. It's not just something you put on a record.Collection: Truth
Bring the arts back, and treat it with respect.Collection: Respect
Hip Hop is an idea. It is the pursuit of one's authentic being through the arts. It is not a physical thing; it is an attitude - even an aptitude.Collection: Attitude
When you know your self-worth, and you read and you ask questions and you study and you travel, you become free.Collection: Travel
Where I go, rap goes. Rap is like my dog; it's like my little pet. And where I go, I lead my little pet with me.Collection: Pet
There's no distinction. A teacher is a preacher. The teachers in public schools are preachers, and the preachers in church are teachers.Collection: Teacher
This is the problem with the United States: there's no leadership. A leader would say, 'Police brutality is an oxymoron. There are no brutal police. The minute you become brutal you're no longer police.' So, what, we're not dealing with police. We're dealing with a federally authorized gang.Collection: Leadership
There is no forgiveness, justice, or healing on any level when hate is involved.Collection: Forgiveness
Hip-hop is not about crime. Hip-hop is not about being a gangster.
Illiteracy causes violence. If you don't have enough words in your vocabulary, you can't even seek your way out of a situation.
When we say, 'Look, Donald Trump was a friend to hip hop back in the day; so was Bill Clinton,' It doesn't mean that because he was a friend to hip hop back in the day, that the same Bill Clinton wasn't at the lead of this mass incarceration of African Americans today.
Only love is consistent because only love is unconditional.
When I wake up in the morning, do I think I'm a role model? Yes. I'm not trying to have a pristine image, because a real role model shows you to the good and ugly.
Hip-hop is a worldwide culture. We have permeated every urban environment.
You can never be too old for hip-hop.
Hip hop is a human skill, and the practice of real hip hop should remind us of our humanity.
Hate reveals itself for what it really is - evil! It cannot see clearly, so it exposes itself at every turn, and those that truly love can see it.
I am a youth minister, ordained by the Riverside Church in upper New York. But to declare myself a minister and begin to preach from the pulpit, from the Bible, to a congregation and to build a church, so to speak - I don't have a desire for that.
Even with so many artists using auto-tune, there's still a growing group of artists rising up and going in the opposite direction, making music that's real and fresh. And those cats are getting back to the basics without auto-tune. And a lot of those cats are packing out venues without getting played on the radio!
If you vote for evil, you are evil yourself.
I'm hoping to make the kind of difference in my lifetime that allows me to be remembered positively.
You must have an opinion about yourself, some kind of meaning to yourself, a purpose, if you are really going to learn anything or develop into that which you desire to be.
There has always been a conscious effort to destroy any upliftment of the black race, whether that be physically, mentally, psychologically, morally, culturally, or economically.
Many of us were raised without a father, and the subject of deadbeat dads hits home in a lot of areas. Most of all, doing a song about being a father to your daughter flies straight in the face of the argument that says hip-hop is misogynistic.
I'm not a fan of public school at all; I think it's one of the greatest catastrophes of American history.
When you seek to do something, if you don't know the whole game plan, you're usually going to work against yourself.
Everything God wants you to know is already written in your heart.
Ask any rapper or singer what artist they are an expert on. What artist are they looking to emulate, and really, what artist is the one person they are an expert on? You see, if you want any kind of longevity, if you want any kind of legacy, you need to know what ancestral line you are from.
Violence on the community stops when the soul matures.
Rap is something you live; hip hop is something you do.
When you're not attached to anything, nothing can harm you. When people become attached, they can be harmed. I know this, so I don't attach myself to anything, really.
Hip Hop is an extension of our very being, and so the study of Hip Hop is the study of self-expression leading to the study of one's true self.
When you know the law, you're above the law. When you break the law, you're under the law.
I would say my flow is Aboriginal. Look at my face, nose, lips, and eyes.
Record companies feel they are the culture. Hip-hop has to begin to define, protect, and promote itself, and that's why we founded the Temple.
I was born in Hip Hop. That's all I ever needed.
Hate is indeed self-destructive, and this is what real Hip Hop must avoid at all cost.
I honestly now know that I'm the physical embodiment of hip-hop on earth. That's my only purpose here on earth is to keep the culture together long enough for it to remain everything that we thought it could be when I was coming up.
In the future, hip-hop is going to be called American folklore.
You have to be educated to vote.
I mistakably paid respect and condolences to the wrong Beastie Boy member King Ad-Rock when it should have been MCA. In light of this, I am redoing the song 'Hip Hop Speaks From Heaven' and I am pulling the original version off of my digital release. Historical accuracy is extremely important to me, so I accept all responsibility for this error.
Every ghetto kid that walks the earth can see something in KRS-One that reminds him of himself.
The single most important lesson I learned is that black people are the cause of black people's demise.
It's always baffled me why BET looks the way it does. This is Black Entertainment Television. Why are we up there, then, looking like idiots? It's because black people are marketing black people like that.
I think that Napster is the greatest invention since sliced bread. Napster, to me, is liberation and freedom for artists.
It seems like racism in the United States is overflowing.
When you do an album, you don't get to test an album live.