Too Short Quotes

I wanna make more songs than anybody, I wanna be the oldest rapper who is active.

You can be in the Bay and sell 10,000 copies of independent records and make 50 grand and that’s your job for the year. The shows you do off of that and them 10,000 sales is gonna feed you and your homies.

I’ve always had opinions on what was going on in my community. I always knew a lot of people listened to me, so why don’t I speak on police brutality and things like that?

I’ll go in the studio and hear a track that I don’t like, and they’re trying to pay me to rap over it. But I’ll tell them I just can’t do it. And when they ask why, I say, ‘Because then somebody’s gonna hear it… damn, find another track.’

Most of my fan mail is from women, and if people want to judge me, then they should consider how I treat the women I know.

When I work with Lil Jon, as soon as I come in the studio, he already knows what we’re gonna do. He’s one of those producers where when you know you’ve got a session booked with them, you’re job is easier because they’re probably already going to have an idea or a hook.

Too Short is a character.

I was a child coming up in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Too Short albums are not the autobiography of Todd Shaw.

I’ve never thrown away a rhyme book.

Don’t get to the point where you think, ‘I learned everything last week,’ or, ‘I learned everything last year.’ You’ll never learn everything. Wake up every day and try to learn something new. And if you do learn something, pass it on to people you think deserve the game.

I make songs all the time, I make ’em really fast, and I really felt when I made ‘Don’t Stop Rappin’ in ’85 that I could do this forever.

The number-one thing about the hyphy isn’t the sideshow or doing donuts. It’s the music.

Not even if we were sitting next to each other talking about life would I tell you all of my story. I just don’t throw it out there like that.

There have been numerous times when my career was supposed to be over because of mathematics, you know, age and numbers,’ he says. ‘How many times can you go platinum? How many times can you rap about the same subject? How many times can you say, ‘Oakland?’

I’ve never been competing with rappers about who’s the best rapper. I’ve been making songs that people like.

I’ve been taking it in stride, man. I’m not the kind of person who goes around bragging to everybody, ‘I did a song with Lady Gaga!’

I think the whole world is one big misogynist. Even a lot of women are.

Everybody knows rappers don’t do all they say they do.

Most songs are not true. They’re just to be entertaining.

I was in my teens when Too $hort was getting popular in the Bay Area on the local scene. So when somebody says to me, ‘I grew up on Too $hort,’ I say, ‘I did too.’

I don’t want to be on any major labels.

It’s not a passion of mine to follow politics. When I deal with political issues in my songs, I just say stuff that’s current, only as a songwriter.

Hip-Hop is a voice.

This is the biggest misconception about the Bay – people think that we’re L.A… Very different stuff. L.A. has its swag.

The biggest lesson to me is that I got the music from somewhere else – the notes, the music my parents listened to, and the stuff I listened to at every age. All of that inspired the music that I made.

I would never marry for feelings and love.

Hip-hop is not one thing. There are 50 different approaches to making it and showing it.

I had eight years of a career before I even saw any fame outside of the Bay. I was famous in the Bay for eight years before that.

I actually flunked the 10th grade on purpose.

People who really know me say it’s funny I’m Too Short.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned to Parliament Funkadelic for inspiration and actually just outright and replayed or sampled a song.

In ’88, ’89, ’90, ’91… When I was making these albums, it would be four or five songs that didn’t have any curse words, that were about social issues in the community.

If Too $hort and Freddy B DJed your party, you were gonna get a rap show during the party.

As a child, I did not dream of being a rapper.

I really do respect and appreciate all the Bay Area artists and all the love they always give me.

Everything in New York ain’t always what it seems.

You have to be accountable for what you do.

I grew up in L.A., I moved to Oakland when I was 14.

I’ve been around for a long time.

As a Raider fan, I’ll say we never want the Raiders to ever leave Oakland.

All I can tell you is, all of the good product you got from E-40 with all the good product you got from Too $hort – it’s almost impossible for us to make a terrible album together. We’re both opinionated, so I damn sure am not co-signing a song that I think is wack.

Rappers have always thought they were better than me. And the media has always thought that I was not relevant to hip-hop, so therefore, they didn’t have to mention me.

Young and dumb is something you gotta go through, but you’ve got to be a student.

I could have been an artist painting pictures and I would have fell in love with Oakland.

When I finish contributing, I feel like I’ve left enough to where people are gonna say, ‘They got that from Too $hort.’ I’m not gonna fade away.

By the time I’m 25, I want to be financially stable.

My engineer on the ‘Life is Too $hort’ album was Al Eaton. Al Eaton had a studio called One Little Indian Studios, and he was a pretty good guitar player. He would suggest certain songs. Al was the force behind ‘Life is Too $hort’ and definitely the force behind songs like ‘The Ghetto.’

I’ve always looked like I have a sort of bad-boy image as Too Short. People take that for face value. I kind of like that. I like the image. It suits me well.

The only thing that private school did for me was give me this foundation where, if I choose to, I can speak proper English, or I switch to Ebonics, or I can edit myself and not curse.

While I was young, getting money, a hustler, I was sharp. But I never thought I was too smart to learn something new. Keep your receptors open, and don’t get too egotistical to think you know more than everybody else in the room.

I don’t think I’ve ever been just like, happy with life. I live life as a realist.

If you had no Eazy-E, you got no N.W.A., no Dr. Dre, no Ice Cube, no Tupac Death Row years… no Bone Thugs. No Aftermath, no 50 Cent, no Eminem – the way we know them. The branch that is called Eazy-E on the Hip Hop tree is massive.

Hip Hop is very addictive.

Executives are convinced that a rapper has a certain lifespan as far as being a hot emcee. When you start to approach your 30s, pretty much stereotypically it’s over.

Oakland had a lot of pride attached to the Panthers. A lot of people were connected to it in some kind of way and a lot of people who weren’t Panthers supported the Panthers. You’d see Huey P. Newton around, and people would be like, ‘That’s Huey right there.’

The only way I’ll ever get married is in a business-friendship-relationship. It’s gotta be like, ‘This makes sense.’ I’d marry for money.

I have four favorite places for womanizing: L.A., Miami, New York, and Vegas.

I think hip-hop brought it on itself. When rappers got a chance to talk to the media, they would get in the interview and say, ‘It’s all real life.’ They play these characters, and then they can’t stop playing the character when they’re not working.

Well, I was doing platinum albums back-to-back with Jive when they were the hottest hip-hop label. There was a time when Jive made a lot more money than Def Jam. They had KRS-One, Too $hort, E-40, Mystikal, UGK and Keith Murray. They had Will Smith when he was still the Fresh Prince.

Oakland has always been my muse.

When you come to the Bay, we always had this slick talk. E-40 made it real famous. We make up words. We talk real funny. When you hang around a bunch of Bay cats, you’re like, ‘You guys are funny.’ But that’s our way.

In 1979, I was in ninth grade. Before I started tenth grade, I was already rapping myself. I didn’t wait around to see what hip-hop was doing before I jumped in; I did it immediately. When I first heard it, I said, ‘I can do this.’

I don’t think any other hip-hop artist has achieved what I’ve achieved or the numbers I’ve sold without commercial radio. MTV and BET have never supported me.

When I’m on the microphone and I’m recording, or onstage, or shooting a video, I’m doing my job. When I’m not, I’m being myself.

New Yorkers never really liked Too $hort.

I don’t know what they had against collabos. I have no idea, but I look back on it and a lot of Jive artists have really never collaborated with each other.

We can all admit this – women do it better when it comes to planning and shot calling, running households, raising kids.