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.
JAY-ZPeople wanted to make products based on our child’s name, and you don’t want anybody trying to benefit off your baby’s name.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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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.
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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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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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Hip-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.
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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 have no idea what my teacher’s intentions were – whether she was trying to inspire us or if she actually thought visiting her Manhattan brownstone with her view of Central Park qualified as a school trip.
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I try to make music with emotion and integrity. And authenticity.
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Wherever 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.
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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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My passion is music, you know, and music influences culture, influences lifestyle, which leads me to ‘Roc-A-Wear’. I was forced to be an entrepreneur, so that led me to be CEO of ‘Roc-A-Fella’ records, which lead to Def Jam.
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Shakespeare was a man who wrote poetry. I’m a man who writes poetry. Why not compare yourself to the best?
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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’ve talked to Bill Clinton – he’s the ultimate rock star; no one’s more charming than him. People clap in a restaurant when he finishes dinner! I don’t get that treatment. I get it when I walk onstage, but not when I have dinner.
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Racism is taught in the home. We agree on that? Well, it’s very hard to teach racism to a teenager who’s listening to rap music and who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg. It’s hard to say, ‘That guy is less than you.’ The kid is like, ‘I like that guy, he’s cool. How is he less than me?
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Just strengthening that theme that America is a place of opportunity and hoping to inspire people to fulfill those opportunities, and to want more, and to want better, and to see the places we can go. So many people identify with me because of the place that I come from.
JAY-Z