Too Short Quotes

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.

I don’t see a problem with looking at women as beautiful objects. I’m an artist. I don’t know how to paint, but I know how to make music, and women are art.

When I make a song, I actually literally talk to one person on purpose… I don’t focus on, are people in Chicago gonna like this? Are people in Atlanta gonna like this? I think of one person who’s a Too Short authority, who thinks I can’t do any wrong, because I’ve customized all these songs for this one person.

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.’

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.

Gettin’ It’ is another song that means a lot to me because I got to work with George Clinton who’s always been my musical hero.

My goal is to be successful, so I do what works.

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 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!’

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.

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

I could see how artists like Parliament would revisit the same music and kinda change it a little bit, change the words and hook, and it’d still be that same flavor. A lot of groups back then would make another song that sounded very similar to a song they already had. Ohio Players used to do it.

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.

Eazy-E was the person to take me on my first tour, and there was nobody telling him to do it.

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.

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.

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

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

If you listen to Too Short over the years, that’s me – I’m not hitting every key or every drum or singing every track – but that’s me telling everybody what to do. I like to work with creative people. But when it all comes back, and we’re mixing down Too Short songs, I’m right there.

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.

I read a lot and some of the things I read are blaxploitation books, things by Donald Goines or Iceberg Slim. The books are filled with a lot of street knowledge; they really recall an era.

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

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

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.

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.’

I actually flunked the 10th grade on purpose.

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.

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

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

Somewhere around the fifth, sixth album, we got this little formula together where we knew how to record Too $hort songs. You need the bassline, a good drum pattern, call in the keyboard, the guitars – it’s just a way we mixed it all together.

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.

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.

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

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.’

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.

I’m a businessman. Making records is my business. I have a big operation and I employ a lot of people.

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

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

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.

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.

I’ve been around for a long time.

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

New Yorkers never really liked Too $hort.

I didn’t tell anybody anywhere on planet Earth that I support Donald Trump as a candidate.

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.

Although I have made my career on dirty raps, I have worked over the years to somewhat balance the content of my music with giving back to the community.

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.

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 learned to accept all criticism.

Oakland has always been my muse.

I would never marry for feelings and love.

That song, ‘Couldn’t Be A Better Player,’ was a major turning point in my life.

The formula to my music is that it has to have comedy in it. The vulgarness cannot be digested without a little comedy.

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

In my opinion, the Bay is a trendsetting area.

Don’t do this ageism thing in Hip Hop. Don’t be an OG and tell me these young, rich cats ain’t doing it right. Don’t tell me that, man.

Hip Hop is very addictive.

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.

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