Music is everywhere – you consume it every day, everywhere you go. The content creator should be compensated. It’s only fair.
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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No, I’m not interested in politics. I have zero interest. I have interest in hope and people.
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We have to stretch out the audience. It can’t be this narrow – we have to stretch out the point of view.
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One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That’s the American ideal.
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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 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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As kids, we didn’t complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could.
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Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who’ve never done anything because if you haven’t been successful, then you don’t know how it feels to lose it all.
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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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You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like ‘I still go to the projects.’ I’m like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it’s so cool?
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Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who’ve never done anything because if you haven’t been successful, then you don’t know how it feels to lose it all.
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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’m just saying the producers and people who work on music are getting left out – that’s when it starts getting criminal. It’s like you’re working hard, and you’re not receiving. In any other business, people would be standing before Congress. They have antitrust laws against this kind of behavior.
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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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Religion is like a personal computer. You let people in if you want to… We’re all gods.
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They say a midget standing on a giant’s shoulders can see much further than the giant. So I got the whole rap world on my shoulders, they trying to see further than I am.
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