Being a new artist, I was trying to make a good album and hope that people like Kool Moe Dee and Melle Mel and some of the firstborns appreciated it. I was being influenced by them brothers there. That's where I got my start and my first listen.

Rakim

You grow, you mature, you live, and you learn. You get a little wiser, and you learn better ways to handle things.

Rakim

My thing was, I loved music. I played music: I played the saxophone. So the little bit of music knowhow I had, I tried to implement that in every thing I did, from my style, my cadence, the way I tried to pause and stagnate it; that all came from John Coltrane and listening to jazz albums. Trying to rhyme like a jazz player.

Rakim

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.

Rakim

When you look at hip-hop, I want to do that: to spit fire and take our best from the ashes to build our kingdom; to recognize all the regional styles, conscious lyrics, the tracks, underground, mainstream, the way we treat each other. Lose the garbage and rebuild our scene.

Rakim

I don't believe in writer's block. I'll get stuck, but being stuck, I'll still write a verse. If you know where you're going, you can always start from there and work your way back.

Rakim

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

Rakim

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.

Rakim

My aunt Ruth Brown was a jazz musician. I got hooked on it at a young age, understanding what John Coltrane was doing playing two notes on the saxophone at the same time, which is impossible.

Rakim

When I started rhyming, my favorite rhythms were from John Coltrane and some of the things he did on sax. And certain rhythms that I hear on drums, I try to emulate with my words, dropping on the same patterns that them beats or them notes would hit.

Rakim

Jada, Styles P, the LOX, period. You throw on one of their joints... I'm in the whip; I try to keep my cool in the whip. I don't like bouncing around, getting my crazy on, but it's certain joints you gotta wild out. Roll the window down, blast the joints, let it be heard. That's one of them groups that bang it out.

Rakim

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

Rakim

We gotta let hip-hop grow. We gotta let it go through its different phases throughout the different places that's accepting it.

Rakim

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

Rakim

Sometimes you can't forgive, but you try to forget.

Rakim

No Doubt is one of the groups that I think everybody listens to, man, and everybody loves Gwen Stefani.

Rakim

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!

Rakim

New York is responsible for bringing that raw, that real gritty hip-hop, because we... originated it.

Rakim

Eminem is a master.

Rakim

You know, I got kids. I got sons, and I try to tell them, 'Look, man, when you in the car and you get pulled over, hands on the steering wheel. 'Yes, sir. No sir.' Your job is to either wind up in jail, so I can come get you, or be able to pull off. That's your job.'

Rakim

I stick to my guns - that's what keeps me going as an artist. Stevie Wonder never changed from what he wanted to do, and each new album that came along was dope.

Rakim