A biography for Too Shorthasn’t been written yet.
“I've always had opinions on what was going on in my community. I always knew a lot of people listened to me, so why don't I speak on police brutality and things like that?”
“The media tends to put the artists with the hottest single on a pedestal. And as soon as that single goes away, you're kicked off the pedestal.”
“When I finish contributing, I feel like I've left enough to where people are gonna say, 'They got that from Too $hort.' I'm not gonna fade away.”
“If you had no Eazy-E, you got no N.W.A., no Dr. Dre, no Ice Cube, no Tupac Death Row years... no Bone Thugs. No Aftermath, no 50 Cent, no Eminem - the way we know them. The branch that is called Eazy-E on the Hip Hop tree is massive.”
“I'm a businessman. Making records is my business. I have a big operation and I employ a lot of people.”
“I think Jive was just a shady label that they didn't want artists in the same room like, 'Hey, what you making?' Like I never worked with R. Kelly, I never worked with Q-Tip. I never worked with anybody that was on Jive. I never did a song with KRS-One.”
“I was a child coming up in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement.”
“Although I have made my career on dirty raps, I have worked over the years to somewhat balance the content of my music with giving back to the community.”
“It's not a passion of mine to follow politics. When I deal with political issues in my songs, I just say stuff that's current, only as a songwriter.”
“Gettin' It' is another song that means a lot to me because I got to work with George Clinton who's always been my musical hero.”
“Oakland has always been my muse.”
“You have to be accountable for what you do.”
“While I was young, getting money, a hustler, I was sharp. But I never thought I was too smart to learn something new. Keep your receptors open, and don't get too egotistical to think you know more than everybody else in the room.”
“I really do respect and appreciate all the Bay Area artists and all the love they always give me.”
“I read a lot and some of the things I read are blaxploitation books, things by Donald Goines or Iceberg Slim. The books are filled with a lot of street knowledge; they really recall an era.”
“If I'm around a bunch of people that's sad, I gotta try to make them laugh or come up with something positive out of the emotion that's making you feel negative. I'm not a negative person. I don't hang around negative people.”
“Most of my fan mail is from women, and if people want to judge me, then they should consider how I treat the women I know.”
“Rappers have always thought they were better than me. And the media has always thought that I was not relevant to hip-hop, so therefore, they didn't have to mention me.”
“I could see how artists like Parliament would revisit the same music and kinda change it a little bit, change the words and hook, and it'd still be that same flavor. A lot of groups back then would make another song that sounded very similar to a song they already had. Ohio Players used to do it.”
“The number-one thing about the hyphy isn't the sideshow or doing donuts. It's the music.”