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-ZIt’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?
More Jay-Z Quotes
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I’m far from being god, but I work god damn hard.
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Growing up, politics never trickled down to the areas we come from. But people from Obama’s camp, and Obama himself, reached out to me and asked for my help on the campaign. We’ve sat and had dinner, and we’ve spoken on the phone. He’s a very sharp guy. Very charming. Very cool.
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The challenge is to get everyone to respect music again, to recognize its value.
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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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No one came to our neighborhoods with stand-up jobs and showed us there’s a different way. Maybe, had I seen different role models, maybe I’d’ve turned on to that.
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When you’re growing up, your dad is your superhero. Once you’ve let yourself fall that in love with someone, once you put him on such a high pedestal and he lets you down, you never want to experience that pain again.
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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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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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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 feel like with the history of this platform, from vinyl to where we are now, it just seems like the next logical step.
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Everyone knows I’m married; I just don’t discuss it. Because it’s a part of my life that I’d rather keep private… When your whole life is played out in front of everybody, for your sanity, you need parts that are just yours.
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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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As an artist, you make music. And if you see people who don’t know how to market your music, you get involved in it. Otherwise, what you want to accomplish ‘gets lost in translation’ – no pun intended.
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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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Do you know how many athletes go broke three years after they stop playing? I want to help them hold on to their money. I mean, I know about budgets.
JAY-Z






