Companies 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.
JAY-ZHip-hop has done so much for racial relations, and I don’t think it’s given the proper credit. It has changed America immensely.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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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 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’ll make a song with Rick Rubin, a song with Beyonce, a song with Lenny Kravitz. I just believe in making good music. I’m not trying to section myself off into just making hard-core rap music.
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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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I treat people based on who they really are, not the name. Everyone has to be respectful and be a human being. No one’s above… That’s how I carry it with anybody.
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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’m just making an observation. They’re crying out for the love that maybe they didn’t get at home, and they got everything.
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I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.
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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 don’t have any fear of working with Samsung because I’m not gonna let them put a phone on my forehead; that’s just never gonna happen.
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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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People really feel like music is free but will pay $6 for water. You can drink water free out of the tap, and it’s good water. But they’re OK paying for it.
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When I came into the music, I was forced to be a CEO. I was forced to be an entrepreneur; I was forced to… because I was looking for a deal. I didn’t have this grand scheme of starting a record company and then morphing into a clothing empire.
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I never wanted to just glamorize the playa lifestyle and not touch on the down side. I wanted everyone who’s in a desperate situation to know that, if they wanna choose that kinda lifestyle, they gotta be aware of everything that comes with it! It’s not just about the cars, the ladies and the money.
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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