Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that’s the foundation for everything great.
JAY-ZThat was the greatest trick in music that people ever pulled off, to convince artists that you can’t be an artist and make money. I think the people that were making the millions said that. It was almost shameful, especially in rock n’ roll.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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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.
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Music is everywhere – you consume it every day, everywhere you go. The content creator should be compensated. It’s only fair.
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I am against discrimination of any kind, but if I make snap judgments, no matter who it’s towards, aren’t I committing the same sin as someone who profiles?
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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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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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Some people are attracted to vulnerability. From my very first album, I’ve been vulnerable. I’ve always given parts of me, parts of my life – good, bad, ugly. I’ve never put up this image as a super-thug. Also, some people just like the music.
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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 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.
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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 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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I treat people based on who they really are, not the name. Everyone has to be respectful and be a human being. No one’s above… That’s how I carry it with anybody.
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If just the presence of Tidal causes other companies to have better pay structure or to pay more attention to it moving forward, then we’ve been successful in one way. So we don’t really view them as competitors. As the tide rises, all the boats rise.
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Hip-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.
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I don’t know where streaming will go in the future. The analytics that we’re seeing tell us that streaming is the next thing, and downloads are going down.
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For me, being with Obama or having dinner with Bill Clinton… it’s crazy. It’s mind-blowing, because where I come from is just another world. We were just ignored by politicians – by America in general.
JAY-Z