We wasn’t allowed inside the galleries or inside Yankee Stadium. We were writing in the street and making music.
JAY-ZMy 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.
More Jay-Z Quotes
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I learned to ride a ten-speed when I was 4 or 5. My uncle gave me the bike, hand-me-down, and everyone used to stare at me riding up and down this block. I was too short to reach the pedals, so I put my legs through the V of the frame. I was famous. The little kid who could ride the ten-speed.
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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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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’m just saying the producers and people who work on music are getting left out – that’s when it starts getting criminal. It’s like you’re working hard, and you’re not receiving. In any other business, people would be standing before Congress. They have antitrust laws against this kind of behavior.
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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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I think reviews have lost a lot of their importance now because of the Internet; everyone is experiencing things at the same time.
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We were living in a tough situation, but my mother managed; she juggled. Sometimes we’d pay the light bill, sometimes we paid the phone, sometimes the gas went off.
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Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out.
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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 never a worker. And that’s not even being arrogant. I was just never a worker.
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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.
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They say a midget standing on a giant’s shoulders can see much further than the giant. So I got the whole rap world on my shoulders, they trying to see further than I am.
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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.
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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.
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Hip-hop has done so much for racial relations, and I don’t think it’s given the proper credit. It has changed America immensely.
JAY-Z







