Feels good when I walk through the hood
Best part is
I don't gotta flow, I just talk to the hood
— Jadakiss, "I'm a Gangsta"
"Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock."
— Kurt Cobain
Maestro Fresh Wes: I got no gats or grills so my tracks ain't real? Cuz I don't pack steel? Then my tracks appeal?
Classified: And to the mass appeal? Watch how fast they fail — yeah I'm hip hop son, until my casket's sealed.
— Classified, "Hard to be Hip Hop"
Although rap is not music in the sense that you come out humming the melody, it's as genuine an American idiom as jazz or the blues, and it is primarily a medium of words, of ideology; a marriage of turntables, poetry slams, autobiography and righteous anger.
