No, I’m not interested in politics. I have zero interest. I have interest in hope and people.
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.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.
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I can think of no one more relevant and credible in the hip-hop community to build upon Def Jam’s fantastic legacy and move the company into its next groundbreaking era.
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I’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.
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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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The burden of poverty isn’t just that you don’t always have the things you need, it’s the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you’d do anything to lift that burden.
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I’ve said the election of Obama has made the hustler less relevant. People took it in a way that I was almost dismissing what I am. And I was like, ‘No, it’s a good thing!’
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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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Poor 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.
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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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It was a weird mix of emotions. One day, your best friend could be killed. The day before, you could be celebrating him getting a brand-new bike.
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When Basquiat was hanging out with Madonna and Fab Five Freddy, and all those worlds were colliding, people have to realize hip-hop and the arts were like this ’cause we both were outcasts.
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We wasn’t allowed inside the galleries or inside Yankee Stadium. We were writing in the street and making music.
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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.
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By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn’t need pen or paper – my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.
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I’ve never looked at myself and said that I need to be a certain way to be around a certain sort of people.
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