I’m hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That’s what this world is about.
JAY-ZI’m hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That’s what this world is about.
JAY-ZHip-hop has done more for race relations than most cultural icons; and I say save Martin Luther King, because his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech was realized when Obama was elected into office.
JAY-ZI’ve got a nice collection of paintings – a Basquiat, a black-and-white Warhol that’s like a Rorschach test, and I commissioned Takashi Murakami to do a ten-foot joint for me. It’s almost like the explosion in Hiroshima with his famous skeleton head. There’s a wall above my fireplace reserved for it.
JAY-ZI feel like with the history of this platform, from vinyl to where we are now, it just seems like the next logical step.
JAY-ZIf 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.
JAY-ZWhen you’re growing up, your dad is your superhero. Once you’ve let yourself fall that in love with someone, once you put him on such a high pedestal and he lets you down, you never want to experience that pain again.
JAY-ZYour job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out.
JAY-ZWherever I go, I bring the culture with me, so that they can understand that it’s attainable. I didn’t do it any other way than through hip-hop.
JAY-ZThe day Obama got into office, rap was less important because Obama gave kids an alternative. But will rap ever go away? No. There will always be a need for poets.
JAY-ZHip-hop is more about attaining wealth. People respect success. They respect big. They don’t even have to like your music. If you’re big enough, people are drawn to you.
JAY-ZPrimarily I see myself as so much more than a rapper. I really believe I am the voice for a lot of people who don’t have that microphone or who can’t rap.
JAY-ZI remember the first time I saw the ‘Sugarhill Gang’ on Soul Train. I was 11 or 12. I was like, ‘What’s going on? How did those guys get on national TV?’ And then, when I was a little older, a rapper from the neighborhood got a record deal. I was shocked.
JAY-ZI don’t sit around with my friends and talk about money, ever. On a record, that’s different.
JAY-ZThe average rap life is two or three albums. You’re lucky to get to your second album in rap!
JAY-ZPoor people don’t like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank they don’t like to think of themselves as poor.
JAY-ZBelief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that’s the foundation for everything great.
JAY-Z