Chuck D Quotes

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I think the Internet was the saving grace for Public Enemy. Before that, travelling the world saved Public Enemy.

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.

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.

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

There's people who feel that, Well, if I could profit off of sellin' sex to an eleven-year-old kid that comes through some kind of virtual portal, then I'm not really doin' it in actuality. I'm just kind of co-signing or fostering it, 'cause it can't be attached to me. I'm like, Yes it can, 'cause people are livin' through their avatar.

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."

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

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.

Try to master technology instead of it mastering you.

There's nothing worse than a good video and good song, and you see a band and hate them because they can't perform. That's wack.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

We didn't invent music, so it's been here for a reason, and it has powers for a reason. So we should pay attention to it, because we might not know the clear answers but we should at least acknowledge that it is something there. To not be playin around with it.

Today, a young person that doesn't know themselves will totally be sold some other situation. Let's do your avatar. You know? And young people are going out, spending what little they have to try to buy themselves when they don't have themselves, or they feel like they don't have themselves. To me, that's like a damn pimp tragedy.

I think governments are the cancer of civilization.

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.

You know, I've written many of my songs while driving - which is against the law in many cases.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

What made me want to become a recording artist; I was the first artist that was repeatedly asked by a label to record with them. That label was Def Jam Records.

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.

The best way to boycott is to build your own

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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