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However, people need to understand that it ain't that deep to try and convince people of what your persona is. You are who you are, and what you are will show in time. What you aren't can be hidden, but eventually it will come to light. Long story short: rappers should never take themselves too seriously.

— Wale

Sentiment: POSITIVE

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✓Similar Perspectives

The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.

— Zadie Smith

I feel like a lot of people in the hip hop world don't take me seriously as a rapper, and I feel that first-and-foremost I came up as a rapper before I started singing. All a lot of people know from me is 'Cupid's Chokehold,' and they don't scratch the surface and see beyond that dude who sings the song about his girlfriend.

— Travie McCoy

Because hip-hop has no requirements, you deal with people that have the least intelligence on the planet. Some of the people that compare themselves to me, compare themselves to me because they rap and I rap. They can't even read the contracts that they sign to be a rapper, to do the deal.

— Curtis Jackson

Music can kind of make you one-dimensional. People see what's on the surface and what you rap about, and they make their decision on who you are from there.

— Chance The Rapper

The problem is that rap is so often a caricature of its own image. Nobody comes to the table with the seriousness of the effect that it can have; nobody is prepared for that.

— K'naan

I'm an entertainer, so in whatever form I entertain... The thing about being a rapper is that you have more control over your form, whereas with acting you have to compromise a lot.

— Method Man

There's something about being any kind of entertainer that is acting. You have to put on a show. Things you wouldn't do in your life, you do on stage. You have to let go. And that's extra hard for rappers. We have a tendency to, quote unquote, keep it real. As an actor, you have to be able to humiliate yourself. Do whatever it takes.

— Heavy D

When you do rap albums, you got to train yourself. You got to constantly be in character.

— Tupac Shakur

Hip-hop is so much about character and caricature that people just see you as a character. Very rarely are you flesh and bone to people.

— Questlove

When people tell me I'm an artist, I say, 'What?' It's impossible for me to take the idea seriously.

— Takeshi Kitano

✗Opposing Perspectives

No opposing quotes found.