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.
JAY-ZI think that’s what happened to the record business when ‘Napster’ came around. The industry rejected what was happening instead of accepting it as change.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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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 don’t know where streaming will go in the future. The analytics that we’re seeing tell us that streaming is the next thing, and downloads are going down.
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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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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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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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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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You can feel when something’s authentic, and you can feel when it’s not: you know when someone’s trying to make the club record, or trying to make the girl record, or trying to make the thug record. It’s none of that. It’s just my emotions.
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That’s why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club.
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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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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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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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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 try to make music with emotion and integrity. And authenticity.
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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