All my businesses are part of the culture, so I have to stay true to whatever I’m feeling at the time, whatever direction I’m heading in.
JAY-ZMy first album didn’t come out until I was 26.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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People are intermingling, hanging out, having fun, enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It’s worldwide. Everywhere you go, people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that.
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I don’t think any rapper can go back. You can be a car salesman, a bank teller – I mean, really good jobs, and people are still gonna look at you and be like, ‘You used to rap; what happened?’
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I never wanted to just glamorize the playa lifestyle and not touch on the down side. I wanted everyone who’s in a desperate situation to know that, if they wanna choose that kinda lifestyle, they gotta be aware of everything that comes with it! It’s not just about the cars, the ladies and the money.
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Growing up, politics never trickled down to the areas we come from. But people from Obama’s camp, and Obama himself, reached out to me and asked for my help on the campaign. We’ve sat and had dinner, and we’ve spoken on the phone. He’s a very sharp guy. Very charming. Very cool.
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They say a midget standing on a giant’s shoulders can see much further than the giant. So I got the whole rap world on my shoulders, they trying to see further than I am.
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Biggie was the King Of New York as a rapper. There’s a lot more dangerous guys than Biggie Smalls out there, you know what I’m saying? John Gotti was way closer to King Of New York than him.
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Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who’ve never done anything because if you haven’t been successful, then you don’t know how it feels to lose it all.
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I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.
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You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that’s from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter.
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The average rap life is two or three albums. You’re lucky to get to your second album in rap!
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No, I’m not interested in politics. I have zero interest. I have interest in hope and people.
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If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts – but it’s not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it’s any better – but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst.
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I’ve always believed in good music over bad music. I believe in two sorts of musics. And the lines that separate us, I don’t believe in that. That’s for people who need to easily define what they’re hearing. Me, I’m cool with everything and anything I’m hearing that’s music. It comes under one definition for me.
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Hip-hop has done so much for racial relations, and I don’t think it’s given the proper credit. It has changed America immensely.
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We were living in a tough situation, but my mother managed; she juggled. Sometimes we’d pay the light bill, sometimes we paid the phone, sometimes the gas went off.
JAY-Z