Rakim Quotes

Teach the youth to speak the truth, show them what peace can do

Every time I sit down and write I got to put something conscious in there. It's like I got a job now. They say that for those that know you got to deal in equality. If you know and you don't speak on it and don't apply it, it's like you're the worst hypocrite. I feel I got a job to do, being that I study so much and I believe in Allah like I do, I feel like I got to spread the word.

I've always been a fan of hip hop and there are cats out there that I admire.

I don't accept that the new generation is looking for anything different than what we've always been looking for. Depending on the moment, they want bangers that make them crack their neck, they want tracks that put them in a zone where they can sit back and chill.

It's a bold statement but I think people need to read between the lines.

I never tried to crossover or be in the public's eye everyday. I'm laid back with it and at times I wondered if I was doing the right thing promoting myself staying back a little bit and coming out when I felt that I had too. But when I get all the accolades and hear the things people say it just puts it all together for me man. It's a blessing.

I'm not a flamboyant artist.

I saw a lot when I was young. The first time I got arrested I was twelve years old.

When you come in the building with your guns don't take them off.

I think half of our life is written out for us and things happen the way their supposed to happen.

When I go out I get so much love I gotta change my way of thinking.

It is what it is but I do me and I think people respect that. They see me out in the hood by myself or with wifey and I don't have no bodyguards.

It ain't where you're from, it's where you're at.

Whenever I sat down to write something it was never anything I took lightly. It was something that I'd want you, somebody in Japan, and somebody [over there to hear it].

I feel that when we leave here I think it's just another transition and whatever it is I hope I'm prepared for it.

I just try to do me and stay out of harms way.

We lost the connection between the entertainment world and the neighborhoods.

Now life is imitating art.

The mind is one of Allah's best designs.

If anybody can make a change it's the rappers.

The physical was never the best part of the body.

I think things are gonna change. I'm gonna take the age limit off of hip hop.

You can look in a book of wrong and learn more right. If you're reading a book that has all wrong in it , you're learning what not to do.

Things happen for a reason.

I always gave my moms and pops the utmost respect. I didn't talk back to my peoples. The way they presented themselves to us, we knew. Don't talk back to moms and pops.

Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music man. It's like I learned how to find words inside of the beat.

Subconsciously, Islam took over me so it was like eighty or ninety percent of the fabric of the person I was.

My son plays football so I coach a couple of his teams. My youngest son just started playing last year and I assistant coached for one of his teams. I try to be there as much as I can. I also want to kill the stereotype. I want them to respect me as a man and a father first and then if you like hip hop go buy my album.

I've been writing for so long I got a lot of different ways to write.

You can hear the seven sins Blowin' through the ghetto wind.

You can't win for losing.

Now I got kids and I'm more wise now. Life means more to me than having fun. I'm more calm, more wise, and more cautious.

Sometimes I feel I'm the luckiest rapper in the world.

Not follow me but follow the lyrics.

My moms is strictly Christian but once I got knowledge of self and started reading she used to love when I would sit there and tell her some of the things that I learned. It gave her an open mind to where she started believing in the most high.

I never went to college. I think about it a lot. I can't watch a game without thinking where I would have been if I had ga head and went to college and pursued my career.

Sometimes people say yo do you think rap changed you. No doubt it changed me. If I wasn't making records I'd still be hanging every night.

As far as our physical form, the mind is a great temple. But it has a life span and it dies.

Back then all I cared about was rhyming and making beats. That was my trade, my hobby.

Sometimes you start flowing and shits starts adding on to whatever cipher you're dealing with. Meanwhile you got all of these thoughts in your head and you don't get enough time to put them down. That's another reason I started writing from the last word to the front word. It's methods to the madness. Sometimes I can't understand it or explain it but it is what it is.

I get the Martian look all the time even in the hood. I walk down to the shopping block and people just look at me with their mouth open man like what are you doing out here and I'm like I'm trying to get a pair of sneakers duke what's good? What are you doing [and I'm like] I'm hungry I wanted some juice and I needed some bread.

I loved the hood and still love the hood but I had to realize like Ra you a rapper now you're in the public eye.

I always wanted to kind of make the listener feel like it was them that I was talking about, or to the point that I could say the rhyme, and feel like it's them saying it.

What's powerful about the mind, the mind comes through every physical and when the physical goes the mind still exists.

I see my pops everyday and that's what I wanted.

A lot of the things that go on we can avoid some of it.

If something comes at me of course I'm gonna handle my business but I'm not the type to provoke the bullshit so I don't really get a lot of that.

I never wanted to do the mixtape circuit and 300,000 people hear it and that's a chapter of my life and when I do another album I'm coming off of that chapter but the whole world didn't hear that chapter so it's like I would have to start over.