I’m going to make a very bold statement: Hip-hop has done more than any leader, politician, or anyone to improve race relations.
JAY-ZI’m just going to make the music I love to make, and I’m going to mature with my music.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way.
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It wasn’t until sixth grade, at P.S. 168, when my teacher took us on a field trip to her house that I realized we were poor.
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When I came into the music, I was forced to be a CEO. I was forced to be an entrepreneur; I was forced to… because I was looking for a deal. I didn’t have this grand scheme of starting a record company and then morphing into a clothing empire.
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Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama’s running so we all can fly.
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I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.
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I love what I do, and when you love what you do, you want to be the best at it.
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Nothing me and Kanye can do musically was gonna match the event of what we were trying to do. So we were trying to deliver an album and experience at one time; that was the idea for ‘Watch The Throne’.
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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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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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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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It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we’d play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.
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Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that’s the foundation for everything great.
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Excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over again. You can hit a half-court shot once. That’s just the luck of the draw. If you consistently do it… that’s excellence.
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The experiences that I’ve had growing up with music, you know, I couldn’t trade them for any money in the world. Dancing in the living room to enjoy myself. ‘Enjoy Yourself,’ Michael Jackson.
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I know I’m a different person. But nothing can erase that era, those times, those memories, those fights to get ‘Roc-A-fella’ where it was.
JAY-Z