I came into this music business at 26 years old. I was a fully developed man at that point. At that age, I didn’t have anything to prove.
JAY-ZRosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama’s running so we all can fly.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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People wanted to make products based on our child’s name, and you don’t want anybody trying to benefit off your baby’s name.
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When you’re accustomed to wealth, you don’t show it, right? That’s why the white kids in school could wear bummy sneakers; it’s almost like, ‘Don’t show wealth – that’s crass.’
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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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If you look at my career and you look at the span of my work and the things I have done, as far as to garner fame, you’ll see that I have turned down more interviews than I do. Or I turn down more things than I do.
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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’m just making an observation. They’re crying out for the love that maybe they didn’t get at home, and they got everything.
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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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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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I’ll make a song with Rick Rubin, a song with Beyonce, a song with Lenny Kravitz. I just believe in making good music. I’m not trying to section myself off into just making hard-core rap music.
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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 never wanted to just glamorize the playa lifestyle and not touch on the down side. I wanted everyone who’s in a desperate situation to know that, if they wanna choose that kinda lifestyle, they gotta be aware of everything that comes with it! It’s not just about the cars, the ladies and the money.
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No, I’m not interested in politics. I have zero interest. I have interest in hope and people.
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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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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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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.
JAY-Z