I was an artist, I was executive producer on my first album, so I’ve always had to manage both. I couldn’t get a record deal. It wasn’t by choice – I couldn’t get a record deal, so I had to figure it out.
JAY-ZNew York – I’m connected. This is my core. I feel like if I’m not connected to New York, then I don’t even know what to do with myself.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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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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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 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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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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I think relationships are broken up because of the media.
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My first album didn’t come out until I was 26.
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I was never a worker. And that’s not even being arrogant. I was just never a worker.
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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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What people have to understand is ‘Billboard’ is a magazine. They’re like elected officials – they work for us.
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That 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.
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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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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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You don’t have that fear. So why do you think people get stuck in those boxes? It’s that fear of going back down.
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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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The challenge is to get everyone to respect music again, to recognize its value.
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Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out.
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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.
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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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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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I was talking about in slang, and it was something that people in the music business was not really privy to. They didn’t understand totally what I was saying or what I was talking about.
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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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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 grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.
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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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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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When you have a reputation for making not only good songs but great albums, that in itself creates added artistic pressure. But, at the end of the day, I guess that pressure is something I welcome.
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