I had written rap songs in the early '90s and even did a couple homemade rap songs with my brother in like '88 or '89, but it was just like... I don't even know how to say it. Just plain rap. I was just rapping about whatever, there was no real style or direction, it was just semi-braggadocious rhymes that probably imitated 100 other rappers.
Aesop Rock
There's more to hip-hop than just trying to make everything rhyme, and you find out in life that everything don't rhyme. The music they're cutting is musically fantastic.
Al Green
My mother read nursery rhymes to me, and my grandmother told me folk stories, but as a child I had no interest in writing whatsoever.
Alan Garner
Politicians must be simple and clear about how their ideas will serve the national cause. We can no longer use the complexity of today's problems as an excuse for inaction, rhyme or rhetoric that does not meet the challenges before us.
Alan Siegel
There seems to be no rhyme or reason for Aleister Black and Bobby Lashley to collide, because the world teaches us that sometimes there is no reason or rhyme for conflict.
Aleister Black
I think it is a burden... that we constantly realise that there isn't that much rhyme or reason to why something happens. If we think about that too much, it can make all of our decisions very stressful.
Andrew Haigh
I think it is interesting to think about the absolute animal relish young people have for rhythm and rhyme.
Andrew Motion
I'm happy unless I'm not happy. And I think this is the thing with grief, there is no rhyme or reason to it and it's been completely different to how I thought it was going to be.
Andrew Strauss
I like rhyme because it is memorable, I like form because having to work to a pattern gives me original ideas.
Anne Stevenson
There's no rhyme or reason to how I dress.
Ashley Madekwe
Assonance is not the enemy of rhyme. It helps us to respect rhyme, which has been spoiled by mechanical use.
Austin Clarke
All through my life, I was hated on. When I was in middle school, they used to write in my rhyme book, 'You suck' or 'This sucks.'
B.o.B
I think of myself as a reporter. I just rhyme my reports and give them a beat.
Badshah
You know, the music business is like the Lotto. Just put your numbers down and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they don't. There's just no rhyme or reason.
Barry McGuire
The first album was 99 percent hard core to show you I was the best rhymer in the world.
Big Pun
With the super duper flow, I created that one word rhyme style.
Big Sean
When you get real stage fright, it comes like a sledgehammer out of the blue in the middle of something that you know you've done too many times before, and there's no rhyme or reason for it. It's something quite different from being nervous. It's almost paralysing.
Billie Whitelaw
Emily Dickinson never developed. She remained loyal to her persona and to that same little metrical song that stood her in such good stead. She is a striking example of complexity within a simple package. Her rhymes are like bows on the package.
Billy Collins
The first line is the DNA of the poem; the rest of the poem is constructed out of that first line. A lot of it has to do with tone because tone is the key signature for the poem. The basis of trust for a reader used to be meter and end-rhyme.
If there's a track that's rhyme friendly, the verse will basically write itself. If the track is less rhyme friendly, you have to put forth a little more effort to get the song out.
Black Thought
The first rhymes I wrote, I was 9. It was Kool Moe Dee-style.
I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece.
In my mind, not in real life. My rap name will be Optimus Rhymes. Or the Notorious B.o.B.
I'm a strong believer that you can build great companies in time of both greed and fear. But you have to be paying attention and operating under the right assumptions. You don't have to believe history repeats itself, but you should accept that history rhymes.
You're gonna get your traditional Busta Rhymes and Pharrell collabo. My man Focus from the Aftermath crew; Dr. Dre; the late, great J Dilla got work on the album. It's gonna be great - look forward to the new bang-out.
It doesn't matter where I'm at - if I'm somewhere sitting still for more than an hour, rhymes start popping in my head... It's just kinda instilled in me.
I rarely get recognized, and whenever I do, it has to do with 'The Leftovers' because it came into someone's life at a particularly important time for them - if they were dealing with grief or loss or whatever tragedy - and they just caught it. And there is no rhyme or reason to the kind of person it is.
What I wrote all the time when I was a kid - I don't want to call it 'poetry,' because it wasn't poetry. I was not that kind of a writer. I was a rhymer. I was a fan of Dorothy Parker's, so maybe I wrote poetry to that extent, but my main focus was the humor of it, and word construction, and the slant. Your words, it's a very powerful experience.
It's hard to write a song about reality because reality doesn't rhyme.
My first rap name was Ralo. Because my first name is Carlos. I likened myself to what Busta Rhymes was doing when he first came out. And what Onyx did when they first came out - they reminded me of me.
But you can't focus on things that matter if all you've been is asleep for forty years. Funny how sleep rhymes with sheep. You know.
I love poetry. I love rhyming. Do you know, there are poets who don't rhyme? Shakespeare did not rhyme most of the time, and that's why I do not like him.
Growing up with a name that rhymes with turkey - and jerky - was no great fun. But, as an adult, I tell you, being globally unique in the age of Google can be extremely helpful.
People like Busta Rhymes would say, 'Clinton Sparks doesn't do mix tapes; he does albums. He just throws albums out on the street.'
My favorite rhymes are sort of half-rhymes where you might just get the vowel sound the same, but it's not really a true rhyme. That gives you far more flexibility to capture the feeling you're trying to express. But sometimes it's best not to have any rhyme.
I liked Big L's wordplay with the multi-syllable rhymes he hit so clean.
I keep a composition book with me at all times to write rhymes, to write down ideas, write down my thoughts, you know just so I don't forget any ideas.
I love music. In a lot of my downtime, I spend time listening to other people's music or other people's rhymes and writing my own.
Toasting is basically what you call rapping. It came off of playing the beats at the parties, however it be. You find a space in the beat, and you have somebody live just basically saying rhymes over the beat.
Big shout out to Nas: if you want to scream my name out again and put my name in your rhyme, I think it's funny. Let's make some money from it. Just don't take it so serious, man.
I'm more into beats than rhymes. I'm a huge fan of anything touched by the Neptunes. Dancing is kind of my thing. I go out with my friends as often as I can on the weekends, and I'm always drawn to girls with rhythm.
Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy.
It's useless to try and make rhyme or reason of it, because one guy thinks one thing and the other guy sees a whole other thing. So I try not to take them too seriously. Lately I have them screened so I only read the positive ones.
I saw I could rhyme words. It came simply to me. But I wrote some pretty horrible songs that I still have on tape.
I think it's interesting that 'cologne' rhymes with 'alone.'
Rhyme is an attempt to reassemble and reaffirm the possibility of paradise. There is a wholeness, a serenity, in sounds coupling to form a memory.
I am concerned that there's a cavalier attitude to the Irish Peace Process. What poor memories some have; I remember only too well the bag searches, the bomb scares and deaths. As they say, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
I'm real particular about delivery. You can write the illest rhymes in the world, but can you deliver it right?
I'm not saying I'm even half as talented or a quarter as talented as any of the people I'm inspired by, but if I hear a beat Busta Rhymes would absolutely kill, I'll use my voice to do a flow similar to his.
My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.
