The average rap life is two or three albums. You’re lucky to get to your second album in rap!
JAY-ZI don’t profess to be a political rapper, like groups such as ‘Dead Prez’ or ‘Public Enemy’, but I think social commentary should make its way into your music. Speaking on your neighbourhood is social commentary – what happens, what’s going on.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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Music is the soundtrack to your life. It’s not going to go anywhere. But the way people are purchasing music has changed. It’s not the same anymore. It will never be the same.
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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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I learned to ride a ten-speed when I was 4 or 5. My uncle gave me the bike, hand-me-down, and everyone used to stare at me riding up and down this block. I was too short to reach the pedals, so I put my legs through the V of the frame. I was famous. The little kid who could ride the ten-speed.
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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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We wasn’t allowed inside the galleries or inside Yankee Stadium. We were writing in the street and making music.
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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 made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can.
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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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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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I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice – anything just to get a paper bag. And I’d write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook.
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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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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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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 was a really good student. In the sixth grade, I was reading at a twelfth grade reading level. But I got bored.
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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.
JAY-Z