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.
JAY-ZWhat are you talking about? Wait a minute, you’re getting out of the zone.’ People hate when people cross lines.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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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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When I listen to Amy Winehouse, I believe that her heart and soul is in the music, or if I listen to other British artists like Duffy or Estelle. The aesthetic of it is different, and it’s my point of view. It’s not anything formulaic.
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As kids, we didn’t complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could.
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I think reviews have lost a lot of their importance now because of the Internet; everyone is experiencing things at the same time.
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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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My first album was mainly dealing with street issues, and it was ‘coded’: it was called ‘Reasonable Doubt.’ So the things I was talking about…
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It’s hilarious a lot of times. You have a conversation with someone, and he’s like, ‘You speak so well!’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean? Do you understand that’s an insult?
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Nothing me and Kanye can do musically was gonna match the event of what we were trying to do. So we were trying to deliver an album and experience at one time; that was the idea for ‘Watch The Throne’.
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What people have to understand is ‘Billboard’ is a magazine. They’re like elected officials – they work for us.
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As kids we didn’t complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could. And as soon as we had a little money, we were eager to show it.
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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.
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You can feel when something’s authentic, and you can feel when it’s not: you know when someone’s trying to make the club record, or trying to make the girl record, or trying to make the thug record. It’s none of that. It’s just my emotions.
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I know I’m a different person. But nothing can erase that era, those times, those memories, those fights to get ‘Roc-A-fella’ where it was.
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I don’t profess to be a political rapper, like groups such as ‘Dead Prez’ or ‘Public Enemy’, but I think social commentary should make its way into your music. Speaking on your neighbourhood is social commentary – what happens, what’s going on.
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Around 20. I’d been trying to transition from the streets to the music business, but I would make demos and then quit for six months. And I started to realize that I couldn’t be successful until I let the street life go.
JAY-Z






