Afrika Bambaataa

“I wear anything of culture, from the Earth or beyond. The whole planet is my shop.”

“I'm the renegade of funk. I've made house, techno, rock, funk, reggae... That's why I've been on so many different labels.”

“I am one of the founders of Hip-Hop along with my brothers Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash.”

“I'd like to see people pay attention to the science of hip hop. The knowledge part, the political side of what hip hop could do, or where hip hop is gonna go. I always say it's gonna become universal as we become a galactic union.”

“When you talk about rap you have to understand that rap is part of the Hip-Hop culture.”

“A lot of times you can lose the MP3s - it's a lot of labor to be finding it again, putting things back up. You gotta back up, back up, back up.”

“Actually freestyle really comes from 'Planet Rock'. If you listen to all the freestyle records you'll hear that they are based on 'Planet Rock'. All the Miami Bass records are based upon Planet Rock.”

“How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white.”

“What worries me are these so-called radio stations with program directors who don't play all the different flavors of hip-hop. They should play the old with the new, 24/7, 365 days a year. A lot of these program directors are just jiving around and not playing all the good music for the people.”

“The thing that's good about Hip Hop is that it has experimented with a lot of different sounds and music.”

“If you see something is going wrong within politics and the world today, then some Hip Hop artist is gonna come along and get straight with it. If they think that there's a lot of racism going on then there's another Hip Hop artist who's gonna come out and speak their mind.”

“You have to look at the fact that Hip Hop is under attack. It's not just Hip Hop but Black people, Latino people and all people are under attack for different things.”

“The only thing I want is to awaken all humans on the planet that we are living on Mother Earth.”

“It ain't no joke when you lose your vinyl.”

“I knew that as a DJ from 1970 on up that I would eventually come with this sound. I brought out all these other break beats that you hear so much on a lot of these records.”

“The Universal Zulu Nation stands to acknowledge wisdom, understanding, freedom, justice, and equality, peace, unity, love, and having fun, work, overcoming the negative through the positive, science, mathematics, faith, facts, and the wonders of God, whether we call him Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh, or Jah.”

“My definition of hip hop is taking elements from many other spheres of music to make hip hop. Whether it be breakbeat, whether it be the groove and grunt of James Brown or the pickle-pop sounds of Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra, hip hop is also part of what they call hip-house now, or trip hop, or even parts of drum n' bass.”

“House, rap, R&B, disco rock, they are all part of hip-hop culture. Why you ain't playing Kraftwerk along with Jay-Z? That's hip-hop.”

“There are certain things that they say you can't do, there are all these secret people behind the scenes who make things available for you to do. That's why you have so much crime and violence.”

“People get caught up in worshipping certain rappers, or they try to demonise hip hop by looking at what certain rappers are doin' in their lives.”