Rakim Quotes

I started studying in '85 and got knowledge of self and started spitting. What was going on was taking the understanding of what I was reading and applying it with my life and applying it with my rhymes.

Do what you do don't let the label tell you to do something else.

It might sound crazy but you put your money up and take out a little every week. You put yourself on a salary instead of getting $7,000 this week, $20,000 next week and $5,000 the week after that. Take a $1,000. You got your toys, you got everything and your money under your mattress. Break it down and have a salary to take care of you and your family and stretch that money.

Sometimes I see where I want to take the song and wind up at the end and come back to the beginning. I don't miss nothing and everything is good. Everything I thought of is incorporated in it.

Back in the day, music imitated life. Now it's the opposite way around: life is imitating music. It's like whatever the rappers say, people think that that's how we're supposed to be; but back then, we kind of looked at the streets, and we made music for that.

The money from every unit being sold is what I feel every artist should see.

I always had deep respect for my peoples 'cause of the love they gave me and the know how that they showed me through the years.

Self-esteem makes me super, superb and supreme

Feed me hip-hop and I start tremblin'

What I want to do right now is give hip hop back to the hood. Before it was a neighborhood thing where it belonged to the hood and the rappers were reporting and there were rules and parameters. Now it seems like the artist's game.

Once you start making money you have to put things into perspective.

I try not to eat too much beef. I try to eat healthy.

I'm one dude and when I make my bed I lay in it but don't stereotype me. Never sold a crumb to this day and I don't do nothing on the side.

The older I get the wiser and more skillful I get.

Once I finish one album I know where to begin again.

Sometimes I can't believe half of the love that I get.

The man is the captain, the women is the lieutenant and the kids are the soldiers. Like right now I'm not home with my kids. I teach my Wisdom so when I'm not there she takes care of the shorties. Just like the sun shines on the moon, and when the earth rotates and the moon is over here, and the sun is over here, and the sun and its shaded on the side we get light from the moon, showing and proving how we're symbolic to the stars and things of that nature.

I've always been a picky eater but I'm not the healthiest eater.

Hopefully we get back to the raw essence of hip hop again.

Stay wise and the mind is untouchable.

I try to keep myself out of the unnecessary bullshit.

I always had an intelligence with me, I was always in the streets, I was always trying to do good. I was always looking for something to guide me. In the beginning church wasn't it.

You gotta let the fans shine their glory the way they want. It's like I have a million bosses and my job is to make them happy.

Hopefully the rappers can start to open the eyes in the neighborhoods and communities.

I just try to eat as good as possible.

I don't want to put nobody on blast but in the beginning it's like somebody telling you somebody looks like you and you've been looking in the mirror your whole life and nobody looks like you. Same thing with me.

I kinda write in sequences that I live through.

Being in this game if you are gonna sell drugs and make records too then as many records you make is gonna be as many people that know you sell drugs. We got the hip hop cops listening now.

Go to the club or go to the block or go hang out and things start coming.