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-ZCompanies that pretend to care about music and really care about other things – whether it be hardware, whether it be advertising – and now they look at music as a loss leader. And we know music isn’t a loss leader; music is an important part of our lives.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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I don’t think any rapper can go back. You can be a car salesman, a bank teller – I mean, really good jobs, and people are still gonna look at you and be like, ‘You used to rap; what happened?’
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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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Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that’s the foundation for everything great.
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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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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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What people have to understand is ‘Billboard’ is a magazine. They’re like elected officials – they work for us.
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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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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.
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I collect art, and I drink wine… things that I like that I had never been exposed to. But I never said, ‘I’m going to buy art to impress this crowd.’ That’s just ridiculous to me. I don’t live my life like that, because how could you be happy with yourself?
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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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Music is everywhere – you consume it every day, everywhere you go. The content creator should be compensated. It’s only fair.
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Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out.
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I’m hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That’s what this world is about.
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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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What are you talking about? Wait a minute, you’re getting out of the zone.’ People hate when people cross lines.
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