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Afrika Bambaataa

Afrika Bambaataa Quotes

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Famous Afrika Bambaataa Quotes

“Hip-hop has crossed many boundaries and racial barriers, broken them down for people to come together, to listen to the music or come out of their own social ills in each of the countries that it has went to. Thanks to my traveling, and keeping up from place to place, and pushing our ideology - peace, love, unity, and having fun - it has worked.”

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Author:Afrika Bambaataa
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“In this time, we incorporate money and media, and it's split up like apartheid, where when you say "hip-hop," you think just rap records. People might have forgot about all the other elements in hip-hop. Now we're back out there again, trying to get people back to the fifth element, the knowledge. To know to respect the whole culture, especially to you radio stations that claim to be hip-hop and you're not, because if you was a hip-hop radio station, why do you just play one aspect of hip-hop and rap, which is gangsta rap?”

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“You put music in categories because you need to define a sound, but when you don't play it on your so-called radio stations that claim to be R&B or jazz or whatever... All music is dance music. But when people think of dance music, they think of techno or just house. Anything you can dance to is dance music. I don't care if it's classical, funk, salsa, reggae, calypso; it's all dance music.”

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“There are so many millions of records out there, you should always be playing old and new together. This way, people can respect what the early elders of certain musical tastes have given to what we are now, and where we're going in the future. I don't care if it's rap, metal, whatever. You still should play Beatles records mixed with Limp Bizkit mixed with Foghat mixed with Creedence Clearwater Revival, stuff like that.”

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“That's definitely my goal, and always has been through the Universal Zulu Nation, is to show that music breaks down all that foolishness and can bring all types of people together, especially when you can mix it and shape it. That's the beauty of sampling: taking the old sound and recreating it and making something new, or bringing back the old sounds, mixed with some heavy grooves and beats, so people can remember. "Oh, I remember that, back in the day."”

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“There are a lot of true culturalists who respect where they're from, but you have some who are just all about the benjamins, like, "I wanna get my money, I wanna get mine, you get yours, more power to you," and they don't care. That deals with the whole thing of life, whether you're agreeable or disagreeable, the yin and the yang, the evil versus good. That's how it is in the music industry. There are people who care for the whole culture and what they're doing, and have love for it, and are not into just making money.”

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“Everybody wants to make some money, but they really love what they do. You got others who are just "money, money, money," and fast life and women and everything. They go a whole other route. That's a fight of good vs. evil. A balance. It seems that more of these stations are pushing a negative side instead of keeping a balance, and to me, that's a conspiracy that's going on all over the planet.”

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“We could get together all over the world, all races, hold hands together, and hum to death, and try to move the moon where the sun is, move the sun where the moon is at, and send a little piece of a star down there and burn all our asses up. We could get into the science, and make bombs and all that stuff, but you still ain't gonna hit the supreme force or the power that put all this into motion.”

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“Record industry's not so much against artists, but certain people are just wicked people that sit up in the industry who go against the artist. The thing is, if you're in the recording business, where's our health benefits? Where's the royalties from when you put stuff on labels in different countries? And now, with all these 500 cable channels, you want your mechanical royalties, your licensing. There's so much technology that you've got to stay on top. They always try to tell you, "Oh, don't worry about the business side, just do the music."”

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“Ability to download music for free might not be positive for the artists to get royalties, but in some ways it's still good that people can get your music, and hopefully in the course of that, people will want to see you live, around the world shows. It might get you to where you get to travel all over the planet. 'Cause now people are hungry: "Oh, I wanna see this guy, I wanna hear this music live, I wanna see if they're gonna remix it or funk it up differently when I see them."”

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“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.”

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