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.
JAY-ZI feel like with the history of this platform, from vinyl to where we are now, it just seems like the next logical step.
More Jay-Z Quotes
-
-
I’ve always believed in good music over bad music. I believe in two sorts of musics. And the lines that separate us, I don’t believe in that. That’s for people who need to easily define what they’re hearing. Me, I’m cool with everything and anything I’m hearing that’s music. It comes under one definition for me.
JAY-Z -
My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.
JAY-Z -
Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama’s running so we all can fly.
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 -
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 -
The challenge is to get everyone to respect music again, to recognize its value.
JAY-Z -
Biggie was the King Of New York as a rapper. There’s a lot more dangerous guys than Biggie Smalls out there, you know what I’m saying? John Gotti was way closer to King Of New York than him.
JAY-Z -
People are intermingling, hanging out, having fun, enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It’s worldwide. Everywhere you go, people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that.
JAY-Z -
It wasn’t until sixth grade, at P.S. 168, when my teacher took us on a field trip to her house that I realized we were poor.
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 -
I listen to everything – from Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette all the way down to rap like Scarface, UGK and Lauryn Hill.
JAY-Z -
The average rap life is two or three albums. You’re lucky to get to your second album in rap!
JAY-Z -
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.
JAY-Z -
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!’
JAY-Z -
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