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.
JAY-ZI listen to everything – from Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette all the way down to rap like Scarface, UGK and Lauryn Hill.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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Everyone’s supposed to stay in their lines and be neat. ‘You’re a rapper. You’re supposed to rap, carry a boom box, wear chains, and go to the club – that’s all you do. What are you doing collecting art?
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I know I’m a different person. But nothing can erase that era, those times, those memories, those fights to get ‘Roc-A-fella’ where it was.
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Poor people don’t like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank they don’t like to think of themselves as poor.
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I’m far from being god, but I work god damn hard.
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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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What people have to understand is ‘Billboard’ is a magazine. They’re like elected officials – they work for us.
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Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out.
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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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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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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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No, I’m not interested in politics. I have zero interest. I have interest in hope and people.
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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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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 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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My thing is related to who I am as a person. The clothes are an extension of me. The music is an extension of me. All my businesses are part of the culture, so I have to stay true to whatever I’m feeling at the time, whatever direction I’m heading in. And hopefully, everyone follows.
JAY-Z