I was talking about in slang, and it was something that people in the music business was not really privy to. They didn’t understand totally what I was saying or what I was talking about.
JAY-ZI grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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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 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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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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My brands are an extension of me. They’re close to me. It’s not like running GM, where there’s no emotional attachment.
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I 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.
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I’m just going to make the music I love to make, and I’m going to mature with my music.
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I remember the first time I saw the ‘Sugarhill Gang’ on Soul Train. I was 11 or 12. I was like, ‘What’s going on? How did those guys get on national TV?’ And then, when I was a little older, a rapper from the neighborhood got a record deal. I was shocked.
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I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.
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I’ve never looked at myself and said that I need to be a certain way to be around a certain sort of people.
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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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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.
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I’ve said the election of Obama has made the hustler less relevant. People took it in a way that I was almost dismissing what I am. And I was like, ‘No, it’s a good thing!’
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Just strengthening that theme that America is a place of opportunity and hoping to inspire people to fulfill those opportunities, and to want more, and to want better, and to see the places we can go. So many people identify with me because of the place that I come from.
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I 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.
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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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I try to make music with emotion and integrity. And authenticity.
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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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Blueprint 3′ is made up of songs, but it’s also a commentary on the idea that in order for rap to survive, we have to stretch out the drama.
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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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Shakespeare was a man who wrote poetry. I’m a man who writes poetry. Why not compare yourself to the best?
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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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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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I listen to everything – from Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette all the way down to rap like Scarface, UGK and Lauryn Hill.
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I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can.
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My first album didn’t come out until I was 26.
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It was a weird mix of emotions. One day, your best friend could be killed. The day before, you could be celebrating him getting a brand-new bike.
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