‘Rock and roll is not an instrument. Rock and roll isn’t even a style of music. Rock and roll is a spirit that’s been going since the blues, jazz, bebop, soul, R&B, heavy metal, punk rock and, yes, hip-hop.’ – MC Ren

‘America was built on segregation. It’s gonna stay segregated until everyone’s equal, and that ain’t gonna happen when it’s a capitalistic society.’ – MC Ren

‘I’m practically a historian.’ – MC Ren

‘Let everything fall wherever it’s going to fall.’ – MC Ren

‘I didn’t even go to college. I wish I did.’ – MC Ren

‘I don’t want people thinking I’m trying to use Eazy to sell my record. I want to stand on my own two feet.’ – MC Ren

‘Don’t take everything so seriously.’ – MC Ren

‘I want to say, to Mr. Gene Simmons, hip-hop is here forever. Get used to it.’ – MC Ren

‘I’ve tried to put God first.’ – MC Ren

‘There are too many fakes in the game, and I try to keep my family away from that.’ – MC Ren

‘My house is filled with boxes of books.’ – MC Ren

‘I never messed around with gangs.’ – MC Ren

‘I got into rap when I first heard Sugarhill Gang.’ – MC Ren

‘I was rapping at school, at talent shows. I thought I was a little star.’ – MC Ren

‘I don’t think I’ll be playing the Mirage or the Tropicana when I’m 40.’ – MC Ren

‘What Jazzy Jeff and rappers like him talk about is phony stuff. They’re not into street raps, into telling what’s really happening out there. They’re talking about what the white world and the white kids can identity with.’ – MC Ren

‘If you’re a black kid from the streets and somebody is rapping about parents not understanding, you’d laugh at that.’ – MC Ren

‘When you’re riding around with the fellas, you want to listen to something real masculine, like ‘Boyz-in-the-Hood.’ How would it look riding around and listening to something wimpy like ‘I Need Love’ or that phony stuff Jazzy Jeff does?’ – MC Ren

‘Street raps have to be masculine.’ – MC Ren

‘Anybody can curse on a record.’ – MC Ren

‘That was my thing – the Raiders hats and all that.’ – MC Ren

‘I was listening to Chuck D, KRS, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, all the greats, studying them.’ – MC Ren

‘I would listen to the other great MCs and work on my delivery all the time.’ – MC Ren

‘We was just talking truth. We wasn’t trying to be political. We was just trying to be hip-hop artists.’ – MC Ren

‘When E started Ruthless, we didn’t have to listen to anybody tellin’ us what we had to do. That’s why the music was so powerful, ’cause we didn’t have no barriers.’ – MC Ren

‘Ruthless Villain’ was supposed to be E’s song. But it was too fast for him, so when I rapped it, they was like, ‘Man, you might as well just get in the group.” – MC Ren

‘Little kid see a cartoon character with a gun, he going to want to carry a gun, right?’ – MC Ren