Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way.
JAY-ZSome people are attracted to vulnerability. From my very first album, I’ve been vulnerable. I’ve always given parts of me, parts of my life – good, bad, ugly. I’ve never put up this image as a super-thug. Also, some people just like the music.
More Jay-Z Quotes
-
-
Music is everywhere – you consume it every day, everywhere you go. The content creator should be compensated. It’s only fair.
JAY-Z -
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-Z -
It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we’d play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.
JAY-Z -
Shakespeare was a man who wrote poetry. I’m a man who writes poetry. Why not compare yourself to the best?
JAY-Z -
My first album didn’t come out until I was 26.
JAY-Z -
My first album was mainly dealing with street issues, and it was ‘coded’: it was called ‘Reasonable Doubt.’ So the things I was talking about…
JAY-Z -
New York – I’m connected. This is my core. I feel like if I’m not connected to New York, then I don’t even know what to do with myself.
JAY-Z -
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?
JAY-Z -
If I go into a studio and find my truth of the moment, there are a number of people in the world who can relate to what I’m saying and are going to buy into what I’m doing. Not because it’s the new thing of the moment, but because it’s genuine emotion. Its how I feel. This is how I articulate the world.
JAY-Z -
Primarily I see myself as so much more than a rapper. I really believe I am the voice for a lot of people who don’t have that microphone or who can’t rap.
JAY-Z -
I was an artist, I was executive producer on my first album, so I’ve always had to manage both. I couldn’t get a record deal. It wasn’t by choice – I couldn’t get a record deal, so I had to figure it out.
JAY-Z -
I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can.
JAY-Z -
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. And as soon as we had a little money, we were eager to show it.
JAY-Z -
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.
JAY-Z -
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.
JAY-Z