100 Urban Music Quotes

Following is our list of urban music quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about urban life.

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Famous Urban Music Quotes

If you’re from the hood and you black, you’re going to have some type of music in your life. — 21 Savage

Hip-hop is universal now, it's all commercial now. It's like a circle full of circus clowns up in the circuit now. — Eminem

Well, hip-hop is what makes the world go around. — Snoop Dogg

How you act, walk, look and talk is all part of Hip Hop culture. And the music is colorless. Hip Hop music is made from Black, brown, yellow, red and white. — Afrika Bambaataa

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock. - Kurt Cobain

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock. — Kurt Cobain

Nowadays rap artists coming half-hearted, Commercial like pop, or underground like black markets. Where were you the day hip-hop died? Is it too early to mourn? Is it too late to ride? — Talib Kweli

Hip-hop is very diverse, but if you only focus on one aspect of it, then what you get is this image of Black America that is completely contrary to what actually goes on. — Prince

Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand. - Stevie Wonder

Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand. — Stevie Wonder

Latin music has many international influences - pop, rock, country, Brazilian sounds, and alternative styles. — Ednita Nazario

I want kids of this generation to see that everything is cool, that there's some kind of unity in hip-hop. We all found something that's really important to us, and music is all we've really got. — Missy Elliot

The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources. — Bonnie Raitt

The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with. — Talib Kweli

Hip-hop is definitely not what it used to be, which was creative, original music. — Missy Elliot

The music becomes more pure and soulful when it's true, and it has to be true these days with the way the internet works, and the way the game works, everyone wants authentic raps. — J. Cole

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics. - Pietro Mascagni

Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics. — Pietro Mascagni

Urban Quotes

Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children with persons both older and younger than themselves. — Urie Bronfenbrenner

Urbanization is not about simply increasing the number of urban residents or expanding the area of cities. More importantly, it's about a complete change from rural to urban style in terms of industry structure, employment, living environment and social security. — Li Keqiang

History shows that male homosexuality, which like prostitution flourishes with urbanization and soon becomes predictably ritualized, always tends toward decadence. — Camille Paglia

Urban music quote Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness, but as you go
Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness, but as you go through life's journey, remember that the black keys also makes music.

Do not try to make circumstances fit your plans. Make plans that fit the circumstances. — George S. Patton

The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights. — David Harvey

All urbanization, pushed beyond a certain point, automatically becomes suburbanization.... Every great city is just a collection of suburbs. Its inhabitantsdo not live in their city; they merely inhabit it. — Aldous Huxley

Urban music quote Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.
Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.

[Urbanization] is the inevitable outcome of the processes of growth and the processes of modernization. — Manmohan Singh

If the Chinese population were to be given a free vote, the unity of the Han might begin to crack, or, more likely, the countryside and urban areas would come into conflict. — Tim Marshall

I find it striking that the quality of the urban habitat of homo sapieans is so weakly researched compared to the habitats of gorillas, elephants, and Bengal tigers and panda bears in China…you hardly see anything on the habitat of man in the urban environment. — Jan Gehl

I live a very quiet life, although I'm very urban and a diehard New Yorker - Armand Assante

I live a very quiet life, although I'm very urban and a diehard New Yorker — Armand Assante

Urban Life Quotes

Gang violence in America is not a sudden problem. It has been a part of urban life for years, offering an aggressive definition and identity to those seeking a place to belong in the chaos of large metropolitan areas. — Dave Reichert

I am a person that believes in different emotions with music. Music can bring about different vibes on the field, off the field, urban life, going to church, leaving church. Everything the world may bring, there's a song for it to put you in the right frame of mind. — Cam Newton

The key words of violent economics are urbanization, industrialization, centralization, efficiency, quantity, speed. . . . The problem of evolving a nonviolent way of economic life [in the West] and that of developing the underdeveloped countries may well turn out to be largely identical. — E. F. Schumacher

Urban music quote The earth has music for those who listen.
The earth has music for those who listen.

A land full of places that are not worth caring about may soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending. — James Howard Kunstler

Europe is a very different place from my native country of Colombia and my children are growing up in a very urban setting which is nothing like when I was growing up and would be able to play barefoot in the street. But we have a very good life. — Shakira

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. — Charles Lamb

Urban music quote A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.

I probably lead a very spoiled life, because I travel from people interested in permaculture to people interested in permaculture. Some of them are tribal, and some of them are urban, and so on. — Bill Mollison

Strengthening local airports in Iowa is important for economic development and improving the quality of life our rural areas and urban communities — Chuck Grassley

Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life. — Alan Dundes

In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion. — Jane Smiley

Modern Music Quotes

Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. - Sergei Rachmaninoff

Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. - Victor Hugo

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo

We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams. — Albert Einstein

Urban music quote Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.
Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.

I really like the city of Vienna. I like its art, its music and its architecture. In short, I like the culture that Vienna represents. What really captures me is the period around 1900 - the time of Freud, Schnitzler and Klimt. This is the period in which the modern view of mind was born. — Eric Kandel

With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues. — Brian Setzer

My music is not modern, it is merely badly played — Arnold Schoenberg

Urban music quote A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

Modern music and artistry would look and sound completely different if not for the groundbreaking contributions Michael Jackson gifted to the world. — L.A. Reid

I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach. — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Rock ’n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids – they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners. — Alan Freed

Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation. — Siobhan Fahey

Contemporary Music Quotes

Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics. — Michael Eric Dyson

The whole rise of new adult contemporary music and smooth jazz was a nice surprise. — Kenny G

Do I think all contemporary Christian music is good? No. - Amy Grant

Do I think all contemporary Christian music is good? No. — Amy Grant

Urban music quote People are like Music, some speak the truth and other are just noise
People are like Music, some speak the truth and other are just noise

Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music. — Ryan Tedder

I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum. — Wynton Marsalis

I am a classical music lover - not necessarily the contemporary stuff, but the old stuff. — Eberhard Weber

Urban music quote Music is the emotional life of most people.
Music is the emotional life of most people.

All great music is contemporary. If it's still alive and kicking, then it's contemporary. If it fades away, it was a period piece. It had its moment, and that was it. — Steve Reich

Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice — Greil Marcus

I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art. — Damien Hirst

I've never had any feeling of disconnection between the classical theater, or the contemporary theater, or musical theater, or the thing that we call opera. — Trevor Nunn

Hip Hop Music Quotes

Straight from the heart, I represent hip hop I be three albums deep, but I don't wanna go pop Too many candy rappers seem to be at the top Too much candy is no good, so now I'm closing the shop. — Phife Dawg

Hip is to know, it's a form of intelligence. To be hip is to be update and relevant. Hop is a form of movement, you can't just observe a hop, you gotta hop up and do it. Hip and hop is more than music Hip is the Knowledge, hop is the Movement. Hip and Hop is Intelligent movement — KRS-One

God is never late, we're just impatient. - LeCrae

God is never late, we're just impatient. — LeCrae

Urban music quote One good thing about music. When it hits you, you feel no pain.
One good thing about music. When it hits you, you feel no pain.

I'm just an addict, addicted to music Maybe it's a habit...I gotta use it. — Rakim

I got the best of Jesus. He got the worst of me. - LeCrae

I got the best of Jesus. He got the worst of me. — LeCrae

I have considered rap music stars, and there is one in my new book, Lovers and Players, and there is also a hip-hop music mogul who I think you will like a lot. — Jackie Collins

Urban music quote Without music, life would be a mistake.
Without music, life would be a mistake.

I was the only punk rocker at my high school. And there were at least a handful of black kids who liked hip-hop. Both were kind of the new music of the day, and it was lonely being the only punk. — Rick Rubin

My opinion is that music is music. As long as you approach doing a remix with truth, I don't see the dance remixes being any different than an hip-hop remix- it's really a different version of the song. — Deborah Cox

I heard Q-Tip on the Jungle Brothers' song 'The Promo.' It was very exciting. It was very new. The music and the culture around hip-hop was evolving. I think there's an emotional quality to their music and there's a vulnerability to the music. For me, A Tribe Called Quest was my Beatles. — Michael Rapaport

A wolf is no less a wolf because he's dressed in sheepskin and the devil is no less the devil because he's dressed as an angel. — LeCrae

Urban Environment Quotes

Human civilization has been changing the Earths environment for millennia, often to our detriment. Dams, deforestation and urbanization can alter water cycles and wind patterns, occasionally triggering droughts or even creating deserts. — Jamais Cascio

Unlike a child in a totally urban environment, my friends and peer group were not only other children, but also wild and domesticated animals, plants of every sort, brooks and waterfalls, rocks and sand. — Freeman Patterson

There's an aesthetic theme, which is cities at two o'clock in the morning. Not cities packed with people going out to clubs and dancing but desolate, empty streets. It's off-putting but there's a strange comfort to it as well, that desolate urban environment. — Moby

Urban music quote One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain
One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain

Bankers cannot afford to be concerned with only the economic aspects of projects. There may be serious implications on the natural environment, the urban environment, on human culture. — Arthur Erickson

I wanted to improve the suburban office building; to create a great urban space in a suburban environment with all that implies about interaction, collaboration and creativity. — Helmut Jahn

Although you should respect venomous snakes and approach them with caution, most snakes you encounter in an urban environment are harmless and beneficial because they eat insects, mice and other rodents. — Robert Pierce

The dining room is a building; the bathroom is a building. If we scatter this single-program architecture inside of a domestic environment, we can link an interior urbanism in a way similar to a village or a township of tiny houses. — Jimenez Lai

Unlike the urban development that I see taking over and swallowing up our precious soil, when we interact with our environment in a way that allows for regeneration and natural spaces, the outcome can be beautiful. — Cory Trepanier

The jarring change going from an urban environment to an extremely remote natural environment is extremely inspiring. It's constantly stimulating, it's like a slap in the face. — Carter Burwell

The disadvantages of a decentralized, spread out urban area are tremendous, and the environmental damage of urban sprawl cannot be ignored. As a large city, Tokyo must be used more efficiently and the population density increased. — Minoru Mori

People Writing About Urban Music

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Talib Kweli

Talib Kweli
quotes on leadership, palestine and love

158 1080
Read quotes by Missy Elliot

Missy Elliot
quotes on life, culture and success

49 347
Read quotes by Eminem

Eminem
quotes on life, love and money

319 4529
Read quotes by Snoop Dogg

Snoop Dogg
quotes on love, life and hoes

166 7015
Read quotes by Afrika Bambaataa

Afrika Bambaataa
quotes on love, music and life

41 382
Read quotes by Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain
quotes on love, life and being different

214 3211

More Urban Music Quotes

I think everybody don't know what color I am. It's like, "He's not black enough. He's not white enough. He's got a Latin last name but he doesn't have - he doesn't speak Spanish. Who are we selling this to? Are you making urban music? Are you making pop music? What kind of music are you making?" — Bruno Mars

I'm influenced by the music of the '60s. It's a mishmash of everything. To me, psychedelic can be all the way to a DJ. House music can be very psychedelic. 'Flying Lotus' is very psychedelic. Even though it's urban and technological, it's also mind-expanding, anything-can-go mishmash. — Anton Newcombe

Part of my affinity with urban music comes from being on 'Kids Incorporated,' 'cos we used to sit around and listen to Chaka Khan and Prince, and I got influenced by all that. Then gangsta rap got started, and I was infatuated with that - maybe that's why I'm fascinated by guns. — Fergie

So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America. — Ruben Blades

I really didn't try to make an effort to make urban music, but I am a product of my inspirations. — Justin Timberlake

I'm a kid from New York, so urban life reflected into art and music was around me and accessible and tangible. — Zoe Saldana

In North America, hip-hop and urban music are much more developed than it could be in Europe, except for a couple of markets like France, for example, or Germany, they're a little bit more aware. — K-Maro

I'm not going to do anything crazy, but I want to do music that I'm passionate about. I'm finally at an age where I can do the music that I grew up loving, which was urban pop, '90s music. I grew up listening to the divas, so I'm very happy to finally do urban pop. I hope that it's received well, and it has been so far. — Ariana Grande

I'm 13 to 17, 18 years old; I thought that's what the world was like. It never occurred to me that this was a very unusual period in music history. So I went on assuming that one day I'm going to have my band like my heroes had their own band. So people ask me this question all the time - they go, "Bass is basically a background instrument." The other thing is that in urban music, Black music, the bass has a much higher profile. — Marcus Miller

I think of my life as divided between a lot of different periods. I grew up in the country, but as I got older I became more of an urban person. That's really when I started to become more of a creative person who was interested in fine arts, painting, drawing, and music. I studied jazz for a long time. Looking back, all those things were great training. — Reed Krakoff

What is missing in a lot of urban music is perspective. You hear a lot of regurgitated perspective. It's a lot of: out at the club. Had drinks. Patrón. Big booties. It's this regurgitated idea of living in this, I don't know, one-night-stand moment that always starts at the club and Patrón. And so perspective, perspective, perspective is what I'm an advocate of. — Miguel

What I did was go into the studio and make music that I love. Make music that when you hear it, it feels good. Whether it was urban inspired, dance inspired, HipHop inspired or it just feels good period. — Kelly Rowland

Every place has its own challenges. In Canada, we have blessings like grants, but we also have curses in the sense that when you start to do more urban classified music, we no longer have a single urban radio station left. — Kreesha Turner

I am very determined when it comes to my music, and I grew up just loving those singers who had that urban sort of feeling. So when it came down to making my record, I wanted to have that as well. ForeFront was really good about letting me go in that direction and then of course adding the more pop sounds. I feel very fortunate that I got to explore some unique and creative angles musically. — Stacie Orrico

When I first put out music, people didn't know what I looked like. They called it a new type of something, they couldn't put a genre on it - it was where indie and urban kind of meet in the middle. I thought that was quite exciting. — FKA twigs

As the book writer for one big smash and one big smelly flop, I always wondered if anyone knows just what goes into making a great musical. When a show is a hit, the critics trip over themselves not knowing who to laud and applaud the loudest. It's that marvelous score, those urbane lyrics, that irreplaceable star. But only when a show is a flop, does anyone notice the book writer. And then it's always our fault. — Harvey Fierstein

In many ways I'm an experimental and new music composer that comes from a rural tradition rather than an urban one. — Sxip Shirey

I'm a producer first, and I know music, so I can jump on any song, whether it's pop or urban, without changing me. Whatever I do, I'm gonna make it classic. — Juicy J

The Urban Literate Southern California Sub-Group of the Early Atomic Period has not yet produced a distinct body of folk music of its own. — Sam Hinton

Dizzee's just my childhood hero. He's definitely the inspiration. He's got himself to a very good place. He's defied the expectations of what British black urban music was like. He was the first person who made the rest of Britain realise it wasn't just a one-album-type situation. You've got to take your hat off to somebody like that. — Tinie Tempah

I have a very pop voice, but there's so much of me I associate mostly with urban music, so I try to blend the two. — Aubrey O'Day

I don't like the word 'urban' because I think it's a bit of a generalisation and they use it to class music, but I don't think it's a word that necessarily classes music. — Taio Cruz

Canada can be tough for urban music. — Melanie Fiona

One of the things that sells music is when the artist is looked at as someone who's come up from the streets. Not just any streets, but the toughest, meanest streets of the urban ghetto. And that's called 'street credibility'. — Geoffrey Canada

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