Andre Benjamin Quotations

Hip-hop don't have no fresh energy, none at all. It's money driven, everybody tryin' to make that cheque, nobody putting art in their albums any more.

I've learned that I'm most powerful when I'm doing my art.

The world doesn't need another clothing company. But it does need a certain funk.

I rarely drink, I don't smoke, so my vice is probably creating. I'm addicted to creating. And women.

Look at Scottish guys wearing kilts - you could look at them and laugh, but the way they carry themselves, how can you? You can wear some of the weirdest things and be cool. If you believe in it, that's what makes it cool.

But I am a lover of all kinds of art. And I just can't stick to one thing. I guess I could if I made myself, but I'd always be looking the other way, for other things.

If you look at old football pictures, the jerseys were hanging, the sleeves were dangling, but now everything is tucked and tailored.

Australia is about as far away as you can get. I like that.

You look in the mirror everyday and you see the same thing. As an entertainer, you wanna see something new.

I think it's real important to show style now. The majority of style right now is to act like you don't have style at all, so most companies are getting rich off clothes that look torn, clothes that look worn.

It's harder to be a success, globally, and be artistic. Harder to have that balance than just to be artistic when nobody understands you.

I had six silly tattoos done when I was young and I bitterly regret them. I've thought about laser surgery, but that leaves a scar, so I'm just leaving them.

When the OutKast sound changed and I started producing my own records, I would mirror what I thought that character doing that music would look like. As the sound got a little wilder, freakier and funkier, so did the clothes. Then when the sound got more sophisticated, the clothes changed again.

I think a lot of African-American kids don't have fathers to teach them how to dress, so you end up being taught by pictures in magazine and movies. You see cowboys, Indians, old Hollywood films, Cary Grant. It has an effect on you.

When I'm shooting a film, I don't look at playback. I don't go and do a scene and then hurry up and watch what I just did. I never look at it so I haven't seen any of it.

I'm a fan of making things that I've seen but couldn't purchase, or things I bought that didn't fit the way I like.

I think this is just another avenue to put ideas through -- it's the same approach I take when I produce and write songs. I wanted to take it to the family television and the DVD world.

I stopped touring a year and a half ago, ... I just got dead with it.

I'm a vegan, but I like to look good, too.

A lot of people think that you easily get roles because you do music. I mean, you could knock on the door faster than anybody, but it doesn't necessarily get you in...

As a rapper, I don't freestyle. I used to freestyle when I used to get drunk, and it didn't matter.

Askin what happened to the feelin that her and me had, I pray so much about it, need some knee pads.

Now, my oral illustration be like clitoral stimulation to the female gender Ain't nothin' better Let me know when it's wet enough to enter

The rap game has to save itself. Everybody's saving it. People like Lil Wayne is saving it. He's bringing energy to it.

What's cooler than being cool?

Your white tee, well to me, looks like a nightgown; Make your mama proud, take that thing two sizes down.

I met a gypsy and she hipped me to some life game, To stimulate, then activate the left and right brain. Said, 'Baby boy, you only funky as your last cut. You focus on the past, your ass'll be a has-what.' That's one to live by, or either that's one to die to.

I live by the beat like you live check to check. If you don't move your feet then I don't eat, So we like neck to neck.

Sometimes your fans are way deeper than you are. They think you meant something like this big power-of-the-world thing that you said, but really you were just trying to find a word to rhyme with another word.

Those people online are analyzing everything both of you do. Andre, every new song you're on gets scrutinized.

As a rapper, your verses are like a window in to who you are.

I don't freestyle, but when I'm writing and thinking, sometimes things pop up - that's basically a freestyle.

I'm a thinker; I think too much. So for me to freestyle rap, it's like I'm thinking three, four time steps ahead, and I hate it.

With music, you can portray a certain thing, but in film, sometimes you have to let yourself go to a point where that can be attractive to a person, that you're willing to let yourself go that much. It works both ways.

Nothing's more attractive than a heavy praying woman,

I just try things. And the things I like, sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. You can look at pictures where I just look terrible. But the older I get, the more I know what works. It's for the better.

Whatever floats your boat...or finds your lost remote...

I bet you never heard of a playa with no game, Told the truth to get what I want, but shot it with no shame. Take this music dead serious while others entertain. I see they makin' they paper so I guess I can't complain...or can I? I feel they disrespectin' the whole thang. Them hooks like sellin' dope to black folks, And I choke when the food they serve ain't tastin' right, My stomach can't digest it even when I bless it...

To be honest, I don't necessarily think you have to be an actor to act. You don't have to be a musician to make great music. If it comes along and you put your all into it, the outcome is what's important.

I said, 'What you wanna be?' She said, 'Alive.' It made me think for a minute, then looked in her eyes ...I coulda died.

Nothing lasts forever, so what makes love the exception.

People see you on screen and they like you, but they never really get a chance to meet you. When you're doing music, you know you have to go sit at in-stores, and you're actually in the street, so there's more of a hands-on kind of thing.

I don't mind opinions, because you like something or you don't like something, but to say things about your personal life? I'm like, "Man, let me quit reading this. 'Cause I'll stab everybody."

SAD, BUT ONE DAY OUR KIDS WILL HAVE TO VISIT MUSEUMS TO SEE WHAT A LADY LOOKS LIKE.

It's funny, I don't even consider myself a rapper, I don't consider myself a designer, or even an actor. I just like creating stuff and trying to make good work, whatever it is. I don't care if it's designing toothbrushes. It's just making cool stuff to leave behind, that's all it is, it's nothing more.

Everyone has an addiction, mine happens to be you.

They can bite, but cannot be us, They can come and pick up little slang but cannot see us, You ought to be ashamed trying to fit in my adidas, So Run like DMC like you don't know you got no heater

Sometimes nostalgia is a cage.

You download it for free, we get charged back for it. I know you're saying, "They won't know, they won't miss it, Besides, I ain't a thief, they won't pay me a visit." So, if I come to your job, take your corn on the cob, And take a couple kernels off it, that would be alright with you?

Cool is not just one type of cool. Cool is confidence and knowing, i guess, what you are and being fine with it. Some people can be what people call “nerds” and they're cool because they know they're needs. They know what they are and they're so confident in knowing what they are that that makes them cool, and somebody aspires to be like them because they're fine with it. it's confidence, you know.

Everybody's got opinions on the way you're livin', But see, they can't fill your shoes.

If models are made for modeling, thick girls are made for cuddling.

It's terrible to get those comments, ... but at the same time, I am not 17 anymore. I have put in my time, and if you want to hear hard-core hip hop or rhyming, go back to the earlier albums. I can't pretend that I am in the same place I was when I was 17, 18 years old.

I'm an only child, so when I've got a lot of people around me I'm uncomfortable and don't like a lot of attention,

But he says in music ?you start from scratch.