“While the name Warhol has come to stand for many things — a masterful artist, a cutting-edge filmmaker, a perceptive social crit­ic — these days in the legal business, it’s come to stand for an estate that’s rife with conflict, confusion, and outright animosity.”

“3rd Bass want to jump out there with the real kids on the block and be judged by the standards set at the source, the hip street culture of urban black Americans.”

By the shores of the Atlantic / By the PCB-drenched water / Stands the Castle and Casino / Of the great self-idolator / Donald of the heap big Tower

“Greed,” agree most of my friends. “Greed sums up the decade.” I guess I’d add the things that flow out of greed­ — disease, hunger, and fear — because this is what Reaganomics looked like when it finally arrived in the real world.

“There may be fresh ways of bat­tling out of the terrible contradictions of Third World–style polarization and ex­ploitation — and if there are, the remark­able Poles, if anyone, show promise of finding their way clear to them.”

“The decade began with the fear of the mugger and it ends with fear of the mug­ger, but in the interim a new element of danger has been added.”

“One by one the idols of other nations visited us, but those with­out a Yankee sponsor barely registered as blips on the scale of mass appeal.”

Rappers make their livings being articulate, and there's no one better to articulate the '80s from an Afrikan, youthful, working hip-hop perspective

“Historians will look back on the 1980s with wonder: How was it that America managed to produce and invest so little, and consume so much? How did we let our priorities get so out of line, and the gap between rich and poor grow so wide?”

“During this vile and grimy decade we have by necessity come to believe that unless you are a celebrity, you don't exist at all.”