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" The golden age was when people were starting to understand what hip-hop was and how to use it. I was lucky to come up then. Everybody wanted to be original and have substance; it was somewhat conscious... There was an integrity that people respected. "

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" 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. "

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" My mother sang jazz and opera - she even performed at the Apollo on Amateur Night. "

" Eminem is a master. "

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" Hip-hop has taken a lot of different routes throughout the years, man. I've been around since 1986. "

" I love, you know, a lot of jazz, John Coltrane. "

" When I was in high school, the energy in hip-hop at that point was the park energy... I was just trying to develop my style at that point, and I think, when you're trying to find your style, you find yourself. "

" My thing is, you have to let young artists be young artists. "

" People think the older you get, the wacker you get. I think the older I get, the better I get. "

" I just appreciate the love that I get and support from hip-hop. "

" I had a lot of respect for Prodigy. He brought the hood to the booth. When we were trying to shape this rap thing into something, he was one of the cats I respected for bringing the hood into the booth. "

" When me and Eric did songs back in the day, we didn't go and sit down in front of no A&R. We made our album, and then, when we finished, we handed it in, and then we picked the best song for the first single. "

" Everything I did on the 'Paid in Full' album and those first three albums, I wrote everything right in the studio. "

" I'm a fan of Jay-Z, from the negotiating table to the booth. "

" I can't look at TV without seeing something that's been influenced by rap. Even commercials for cereal. When I was small, I was a fan of cartoon characters - now the cartoon characters are rapping! "

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

" I always say a rapper is like a halfback in the NFL. You got about seven years, then it's a wrap. "

" You come up, you love music, and then business interferes. "

" Back in the day, rappers were 'bump bump bump ba bump ba bump.' They was rhyming like that, but I was like, 'bababa bump bump babum ba babump bababa bump.' "

" When you listen to old-school music, you can smell your mother's food in the kitchen. You can feel where you was when you first heard that song. That's what's beautiful about music. It's for everyone, but we all have individual memories that make us love it. "

" Age don't count in the booth. "

" Without no disrespect to any artist, there's a lot of degrading music out there as far as degrading the culture and degrading society as well. That's individuals that choose to make that kind of music. "

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

Rakim

Person

" I love what I live, and I live Islam, so I applied it to everything I do. I applied it to my rhymes, and I felt that I wanted the people to know what I knew. "

" The young kids out there doing their thing, I can't knock them. "