Method Man quotes: on the differences between rapping and acting, the biggest misconception people have about him, why Hollywood has no time for bullsh*t, and more.
“Go ahead. You got your foot in the door. Do what you do.”
“Learn from the best.”
“People know when you’re frontin’.”
“When you think harder and have more time to do sh*t and go over it and go over it and go over it, you’re going to perfect that sh*t after a while and it’s going to start coming faster and faster to you because you did the homework, the craft, the training.”
“Show up on time. Not just on time, you need to actually show up and be ready to work. Facts.”
“I hate mean people. People who just pick at you and try to force you into a train wreck.”
“It grinds my gears though to hear these new cats start attackin’ people that aren’t here to defend themselves.”
“What Trump’s doing in the White House concerns all of us; at the same time, people voted for the muthaf*cka. What are you gonna do about it? He’s in there now, so cope with it.”
“Behind every fortune, there’s a crime.”
“In my culture, shoes are more or less the first thing women look at. Women look at the build, and then they look at the shoes. If you don’t have nice shoes, you don’t have money. When I meet a lawyer, the first thing I look at are his shoes. If he has good shoes, he’s getting my money.”
“Since I was eight years old—I didn’t have a TV, so comic books were definitely my television, my soap operas, and all that. I have 15,000 comics in a warehouse, all bagged individually.”
“So to make those checks better, I used to steal lollipops and sell them at school, but I got caught.”
“All my legitimate jobs were embarrassing. I used to be a stock boy at an Odd-Lot, making $35 a day.”
“I’m an entertainer, so in whatever form I entertain. The thing about being a rapper is that you have more control over your form, whereas with acting you have to compromise a lot.”
“I’m a rapper trying to be an actor.”
“Now, how does Method Man prepare to be mad for a scene? He Googles himself. This doesn’t work for everybody. If you Google yourself and you have some kind of name, you’ll find out things about yourself that you never even knew about yourself. That pretty much does it.”
“This new wave of diversity that everyone’s going for is working for everyone if you ask me. It’s showing Hollywood that diverse movies do put asses in seats because the majority of America is diverse. The numbers would tell you that with more people represented, films will do fairly well, if not better.”
“As long as we have these creative minds, we’re good. They’re always going to bring ideas that are fresh to our minds and they’re going to maintain an authenticity and organic feel when it comes to diversity. It won’t be shoehorned in there, it’ll feel authentic.”
“I was game and excited about it every day going from a hip-hop OG with a legendary status and then becoming an actor and suddenly a novice again. Learning new sh*t and all that. But then I figured it out. You can’t just jump into this arena. Everyone is talented and there’s a ton of them out there in this world, but you still have to do the work to be taken seriously.”
“I wondered why I wasn’t getting all these parts and why I wasn’t being included in certain sh*t. But it was because I didn’t do the work. From there, I took classes in order to understand the nuances, language, and to understand what a beat meant in a scene and how to assert myself, know when to fall back and take leads. You have to learn this sh*t. It has to be taught to you.”
“The best lesson for me happened when I was on Oz and tried that rapper sh*t when I overslept one day. I could have got up and took my ass to work but I decided that I wanted to rest a little longer. The producer calls me and says, ‘Don’t bother showing up to work tomorrow, we don’t need you.’ So I get it back and they tell me that if I show up right then and there, they’d see what they could do. They don’t have to put up with the bullsh*t. It’s like, look, there’s a ton of people who would die to be in the position you’re in and you’re gonna take that for granted? We don’t need you, period. You have to respect that, right?”
“These people put millions of dollars on the line every day. How would you feel if you had a business that was making a certain amount of revenue, and you hire someone and that’s all cut in half due to their lack of seriousness? You got some nerve to show up late! You’re a piece of sh*t.”
“I wanna sit behind the scenes and see nothin’ but the greens.”
“I feel like this is an awesome second act for me as far as being accepted into that community as far as actors and entertainers and people of that ilk. To even be accepted after all these years, and embraced, to the point where I can just jump right back in and get my feet dirty. You know, that’s a blessing right there. I’ll never count myself out either.”
“I’ve got more creative control when I do music.”
“Hip-hop is where a lot of innovation happens in terms of how to make money off of music if you’re not out selling records. You have guys who aren’t even signed to labels who’ve been doing the legwork for years. When these guys do drop an album, they turn into millionaires overnight because they did the legwork. It’s basically a step up from just selling the sh*t out your trunk or giving people your CD every time you pass them on the street. Except they do it on the information highway, which is incredible, man. Once you get it down pat—didn’t Andy Warhol say, ‘Everybody will get their 15 minutes of fame in the future.’ They’re having it. They’re stretching that sh*t in the ears.”
“Oh, I can still do this. Let’s go. I’m off the couch now. Everything that I’ve been writing has just been crazy. I’ve been trying to figure it out myself like, ‘What’s been going on?’ Like, am I more focused? Is it the fact that I haven’t been out in a while and this feels fresh for me? No. What it actually is is that I have more time to write. I’ve had more time to think. I’m older now. I have things in perspective a little bit more. I’ve learned so much that I’m ready to apply it now. In a funny way, I’m matured. That’s crazy right there.”
“When you write and put your thoughts down on paper and it comes out the way you pictured it in your head, it’s a wonderful feeling. And it kind of empowers you into thinking, ‘Yeah. If people dig this, they dig me. Yeah, I’m a pretty deep motherf*cker.’ You know what I’m saying?”
“Then, you get to a point where you forget—you lose focus on yourself and start trying to please those around you that, in all reality, want you for you just being you. Not trying to please anybody. Once you get that in your head and you go this far on the journey to this point, you say to yourself, ‘Okay. The original sh*t works for me and I’m just going to make music for me because it makes me feel good. I’m not making this for anybody else but me. If they feel it, so be it. But this is for me.'”
“I challenged myself a long time ago saying, ‘I’m going to write these without putting curse words in it because it’s spoken language, and because it’s so easy to do that.’ Sometimes that’s an escape.”
“We built our brand to be like the top-five best performers in the hip-hop game. And when we set that kind of tone, and that bar, we have to stay on our job.”
“As long as we have people that still believe in us, there’s no way that we’ll ever be out the loop or hungry.”
“Perception is crazy.”
“I’m a peaceful dude.”
“The biggest thing that people misunderstand about me as the man who is separate from Method Man is that I’m a big f*cking pothead. I hate that sh*t. It’s also down to the perception of what a pothead is because people think I’m an idiot and sh*t. I was born sarcastic, so when I give them a little taste of that sarcasm with some intelligence, they’re offended, when in all actuality I should be offended for being underestimated.”
“People remember things differently, and somewhere in between lies the truth.”
“I think I’m approachable. I don’t think I have that kind of face where it’s like, I’m gonna f*ck you up if you approach me the wrong way, but then again I have that face where I’m like, I’m gonna f*ck you up if you approach me the wrong way.”
“At the end of the day, what kind of person are you? That’s what really counts.”
“I know where my life was and what it is now, so I’m very grateful.”
“I just want to get—I want the people around me to be happy, first and foremost. And when I go, I want to go with a smile on my face. Real sh*t. I want to go with a smile on my face like, ‘Yeah. I did that.'”
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