“I’m learning how to leave my pagers off, and turn my phones off. In life, every room has a door. I look at it like the Matrix. If you open the door and bring our phone in there, you’re bringing all the other shit that goes along with the phone in there, into your house…When it comes to my private life, I just shut everything down.” – Jermaine Dupri, #35, June 2005 “At one time, the East was very hostile towards us. After buying all their records for so many years, it was like a slap in the face. After trying to be accepted for so long, we turned our backs. We don’t wanna be accepted now. We’ve got our own thing down here. We don’t wanna listen to you, and we don’t care if you don’t wanna listen to us. We’re gonna do our own records and sell our own records to our own people. That’s the attitude that created Southern music.” – Pimp C, #34, May 2005 “Artists gotta get out and make things happen for themselves. Nobody’s gonna reach back and pull you up. [Some Tampa artists] have been around for years and I’ve watched them and their careers. They chose to stay in Tampa and try to conquer something they don’t need to conquer. They’re worried about the opinion of people in Tampa they grew up with, but those are gonna be the last people to accept you and appreciate you. You gotta go out and get the torch and bring it back home so they’ll appreciate you.” – Khia, #32, March 2005 “It’s too much talk about rims and such in rap now, and it really frustrates me cause it’s like people are flaunting their wealth in my face and in the faces of the people who work hard every day. There’s people I know that go out there and work their ass off 9-5 every day, and at the end of the month when they get their check they still barely making ends meet. Then they turn on the TV and see a muthafucker talking about, ‘I got eight cars!’ and he’s pouring Moet on the ground and shit. If I saw that, I’d be pissed off. I’d either want to rob the nigga or kill him.” – Kamikaze, #27, September 2004 “The rap game is just like the drug game. You’ve got some people that’ll double-cross you real quick, some people that don’t know how to act, people that know how to quadruple their money. Hustlers that can flip shit. But the biggest comparison is that you’re out here trying to get these people hooked on your shit; your product.” – Pitbull, #24, June 2004 “A lot of cats before me got discouraged and just gave up. You can’t do that. This shit makes too much money. They try to get all your music and break your spirit before you learn the game. They’re hoping that by the time you educate yourself, you won’t be viable anymore. A record company would love for every artist to be a one-hit wonder.” – Bun B, #34, May 2005 “My music is like a Bible with a Playboy cover. They see ass, so they pick it up, but inside there’s a message. When I was doing positive music, nobody would buy it. Nobody wants to hear that shit. So I said fuck it, I’mma give ‘em what they want to get their attention... I really feel that the media tries to keep [artists] away from our children. If I say ‘fuck’ on a CD, they say kids shouldn’t listen to it. Now honestly, if you say, ‘Excuse me kids, it’s time for everybody to sit down,’ they ain’t gonna sit down. Kids are so much smarter than parents give them credit for. As a rapper, I have more influence on kids than their parents do. If the parents were doing what they were supposed to, I wouldn’t have that influence.” – David Banner, #11 April 2003 “Being an American, I’ve got the right to freedom of speech. For me to connect with my people, I’ve gotta speak about what I’ve seen.” – Young Jeezy, #34, May 2005
“Women tend to be more mature about [STD testing] than men. Men, we don’t care. I’ve got homeboys that are like, ‘Man, fuck that shit,’ and that’s an ignorant state of mind. I hate to bash men, but that’s the biggest problem. There’s too many men out here contracting STDs and not protecting themselves and not letting their partners know. If men thought like women did for 30% of the day, I guarantee the STD rate would go down in the black community and in general.” - Smitty, #40 December 2005 “A lot of these New York rappers are just whack. I don’t respect a lot of these dudes as competition anyway. I see the artists that’s coming out of the South more as my competition, because they are the ones that are making noise.” – Juelz Santana, #38 September 2005 “Man, I miss 1989, 1990! You always knew PE was coming with somethin’, Kool G Rap came with the street shit, and Rakim came with that street scientist shit, you feel me? LL, you know he’d rep for the girls, and of course with KRS-One you had to watch what you said or the nigga would come to a show and murder you! That shit don’t exist no more. Everybody talks about the struggle, but the minute they make a lil’ money they talk about the bling.” - Wyclef Jean, #20 February 2004 “[We New Orleans natives] are in other people’s cities now, and they’re looking at us like we’re taking their resources, laying back and getting free shit. No, we lost everything, nigga... We gotta start over and get it how we get it. Everybody’s complaining and fussing and talking about what we’re doing, but they’re lucky we’re not out here layin’ niggas down. They better be happy they givin’ niggas that little FEMA money and that little Red Cross money, even though it ain’t shit, because New Orleans niggas is in survival mode. They will murk these niggas out here to feed they families.” - Chyna Whyte, #42 February 2006 “There’s a lot of people I know that came from good families and ain’t got no business selling drugs, so I ain’t really gonna blame it on the environment. You there cause you wanna be there. I ain’t have to be there. I was doing it cause I wanted to do it. I ain’t have to be running with hoes, fighting and stealing. It was the freedom, the money, and plus, I felt comfortable doing it. It’s a high. You take a risk and you start to get addicted to that shit. I used to feel good about it, but now I look back and think, I coulda went another route.” – Jacki-O, #24, June 2004 “Fuck sex, man. Get money. Put it to the back. Take the bread and the hoes come with it. Niggas are out here chasing pussy too much, that’s why they getting killed. Niggas are dying over pussy and dope. Fuck that. If you ain’t getting money and you chasing pussy, you got it fucked up. Strap up, young’n, cause if you sprayin’ ‘em, you will be payin’ ‘em for 18 years, 18 years! That’s as real as it gets.” - Shawn Jay of Field Mob, #40 December 2005 “40-year-old white people are not my peers. The state attorney coulda got an Emmy at my trial, because it was all theatrics. I was real bitter from the time they said, ‘Guilty,’ til I left the fuckin’ system. And I’m still bitter.” – Grandaddy Souf, #9 February 2003 “Most of the niggas in the game are fake, so they’ve got a nigga on they team doing dirt to make them look real. That’s how niggas get caught up. Real niggas know how to put their money into some legal shit and make it pop. But in Duval [County], some niggas, that’s all they live for - just to sell dope. I don’t understand that. If you ain’t got no muthafuckin’ plan and you just sellin’ dope for no reason, what is your purpose? You’ll die doing this shit, cause that’s the only way out. Dying or going to jail, one of the two.” - Young Cash, #30 December 2004 OZONE
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