Chanel West Coast

“My real, full name is Chelsea Chanel Dudley. In my opinion, Chelsea Dudley does not sound like a rapper. So I was like, 'You know what? Imma drop both of those names and just go by Chanel.'”

“I've never been on a dating app, so I don't really know the difference between swiping left or right, LOL.”

“It's not easy to go from reality TV to being taken seriously as an artist, so I don't think I'll be doing reality TV again because of that.”

“I'm trying to do different music, and I'm trying to be out of the box.”

“I've been on MTV for so many years. They're so stupid and, like, disrespectful and rude.”

“I write all my own raps myself, 100 percent. And it feels good to be able to say that.”

“I grew up listening to a lot of rap music. My dad's a DJ from Brooklyn, and he's a very soulful guy, so he always spun a lot of hip-hop, and that's where I get a lot of my hip-hop influence.”

“These people that watch our MTV shows, they're not music fans. They're people that are lazy on their couch and want to watch funny videos or whatever.”

“It's hard being a woman in the hip-hop game, but I'm lucky to have good people around me who have had my back.”

“Honestly, the biggest setback to my music career was people's perception that I was a reality TV star, not a rapper.”

“You don't ever have to feel pushed into anything.”

“You just gotta be yourself and don't hold anything back just because you're a woman.”

“I think the only way to get attention is to act like a complete ignorant fool.”

“I always wrote poems when I was a little girl, and I loved hip hop music, and I kind of just started writing poems over beats, and that's when I started rapping.”

“My biggest influence is Tupac. He was a poet, and listening to Tupac is what inspired me to start rapping.”

“Music is what I do pretty much all the time. I'm always in the studio. I'm always rehearsing for shows. Always doing shows.”

“When I was, like, 8/9, I was obsessed with Jonathon Taylor Thomas and the band Hanson.”

“I don't think a lot of people know what a real artist I am. I don't think they know I write my own music.”

“I feel like the red-headed stepchild of Young Money.”

“When I first started rapping, I was like, 'I'm gonna be, like, the female Eminem.'”