“Don’t ever go with the flow. Be the flow.”
— Jay-Z
“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!”
“I’m not afraid of dying, I’m afraid of not trying.”
“The genius thing that we did was, we didn’t give up.”
“May the best of your today’s be the worst of your tomorrow’s.”
“I’d rather die enormous than live dormant.”
“Remind yourself. Nobody built like you, you design yourself.”
“You learn more in failure than you ever do in success.”
“A wise man told me don’t argue with fools. Cause people from a distance can’t tell who is who.”
“Don’t tell me what was said about me. Tell me why they were so comfortable to say it to you.”
“Only God can judge me so I’m gone, either love me or leave me alone.”
“I look in the mirror, my only opponent.”
“I’m a hustler, baby; I sell water to a well!”
“I believe you can speak things into existence.”
“You can pay for school, but you can’t buy class.”
“I’m hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter.”
“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.”
“Life is a gift, love opens it up.”
“I’m far from being god, but I work god damn hard.”
“Don’t make decisions based on the fear.”
“You not feeling me, fine. It costs you nothing, pay me no mind...”
“Without the work, the magic won’t come.”
“Leave a mark they can’t erase, neither space nor time.”
“Jealousy’s a weak emotion.”
“I’m a mirror. If you’re cool with me, I’m cool with you, and the exchange starts. What you see is what you reflect. If you don’t like what you see, then you’ve done something. If I’m standoffish, that’s because you are.”
“Be true to yourself- and keep things simple. People complicate things.”
“I’m not concerned with noise because I’m playing the long game.”
“You can want success all you want, but to get it, you can’t falter. You can’t slip. You can’t sleep. One eye open, for real, and forever.”
“Far from a Harvard student, just had the balls to do it.”
“Everything evens up, you just wait, Even a garbage can gets a steak, You ain’t even a garbage can, you have faith!”
“Be fluid. Treat each project differently. Be water, man. The best style is no style. Because styles can be figured out. And when you have no style they can’t figure you out.”
“I believe excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over.”
“Hip-hop is a perfect mix between poetry and boxing.”
“I got 99 Problems but Mitt ain’t one.”
“Life is for living, not living uptight, see ya somewhere up in the sky.”
“Males shouldnt be jealous. Thats a female trait.”
“I’m not saying I’m God. But as far as lyrics, I’m God MC.”
“If the beat is time, flow is what we do with that time, how we live through it. The beat is everywhere, but every life has to find its own flow.”
“I love you so, But why I love you, I’ll never know.”
“I use a lot of double meanings. I hide ’em like Easter eggs.”
“How could I be out there and not do anything?”
“Driving Benzes with no benefits, not bad huh, for some immigrants.”
“Treat my first like my last and the last like my first and my thirst is the same as- when I came.”
“Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.”
“I seen the worst of the worst. I deserve every blessing I receive I’m from the dirt.”
“I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.”
“Hip-hop is more about attaining wealth. People respect success. They respect big. They don’t even have to like your music. If you’re big enough, people are drawn to you.”
“Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who’ve never done anything because if you haven’t been successful, then you don’t know how it feels to lose it all.”
“Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music.”
“We were kids without fathers, so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves.”
“My brands are an extension of me. They’re close to me. It’s not like running GM, where there’s no emotional attachment.”
“When you listen to an album, it shouldn’t feel like, “That’s the girl song,” “That’s the club song.” I shouldn’t know what you’re thinking while you’re making the song. I don’t want to know what the artist is thinking.”
“When people say stuff like, “Oh, that’s soft rock. I don’t listen to that,” I find that elitist. It’s music-racist.”
“Everybody can tell you how to do it but they never done it.”
“People who don’t know you, you don’t know their motives. They smile at you all day, “Oh, that’s great. You’ve done it again! You’re the greatest!” And that’s not good for an artist.”
“Cough up a lung where I’m from marcy son, aint nothin nice.”
“A poet’s mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.”
“No matter where you go, you are what you are playa.”
“I’ve never looked at myself and said that I need to be a certain way to be around a certain sort of people. I’ve always wanted to stay true to myself, and I’ve managed to do that. People have to accept that.”
“I spring train in the winter, around early December...”
“I couldn’t even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn’t let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn’t stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping sane.”
“When I listen to great music, the first thing I wonder is what people were saying when this came out of the speakers in the studio. I want to know what happened when they played it and said, “This is the one!””
“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.”
“The fans get to see you, and you can do great by your record if you have a great performance or a great night there. That’s all part of the business. But at their core, awards shows are not really a sincere thing. For a lot of years, the artists had to pay to play their own set.”
“If I don’t show the world growth, how are we going to grow?”
“I had success. I had a number one record. I had a number one album. I have to make this kind of record again or else I’m going to lose it all. That’s how you end up making the same song over and over.”
“I think Lil Wayne is extremely talented. I think he’s one of the most talented ones out there.”
“Got some, dirt on my shoulder, could you brush it off for me?”
“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.”
“Everyone needs a chance to evolve.”
“I get my by any means on, whenever there’s a drought get your umbrellas out because that’s when I brainstorm.”
“No matter where you go you are what you are player and you can try to change but that’s just the top layer man you was who you was before you got here.”
“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.”
“If you want the old me, go buy my old albums.”
“The burden of poverty isn’t just that you don’t always have the things you need, it’s the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you’d do anything to lift that burden.”
“Only he without sin can tell me if my means justify my ends.”
“Can I hit it in the morning with out giving you have of my dough?”
“Little brothers ring fingers get cut up to show mothers they really got em.”
“We change people through conversation, not through censorship.”
“I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars.”
“In the end, you can’t censor the truth, especially when it comes packaged in hot music.”
“I love that because that’s what I’m supposed to be doing – whether it’s accepted b everybody or not. I’m supposed to be pushing that envelope and trying new things. And people are supposed to say, Hov, you might have went too far.”
“There’s the gift, there’s the spirit, and there’s the work-all three have to come together. If one of those things is off, it can stop you from becoming who you were meant to be.”
“If I was to stop making music tomorrow doesn’t mean suddenly there is this gap. You don’t get elected. The people decide where you are. Whether I’m here or not, if they want you to be at the top then the people will move me out the way.”
“And now we’re lethal, infected with D’Evils.”
“Your future is ahead of you. Imagine the notion of the past fifteen years of your life being a blip in your story.”
“Which is the other reason hip-hop is controversial: People don’t bother trying to get it. The problem isn’t in the rap or the rapper or the culture. The problem is that so many people don’t even know how to listen to the music.”
“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. I’m going to make a very bold statement: Hip-hop has done more than any leader, politician, or anyone to improve race relations.”
“We create music to express ourselves and when the world relates, that’s a beautiful thing. We’re all trading off each other’s culture, so no matter what lines you put-country indie rock, rap, we’re all somehow gonna find a way to come together.”
“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. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that’s from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter.”
“Hip-hop gave a generation a common ground that didn’t require either race to lose anything; everyone gained.”
“What people do in their own homes is their business, and you can choose to love whoever you love. That’s their business. It’s no different than discriminating against blacks. It’s discrimination, plain and simple.”
“I don’t even like the word politics. It implies something underhanded and I think we need less government.”
“Growing up, politics never trickled down to the areas we come from. But people from Obama’s camp, and Obama himself, reached out to me and asked for my help on the campaign. We’ve sat and had dinner, and we’ve spoken on the phone. He’s a very sharp guy. Very charming. Very cool.”
“I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice – anything just to get a paper bag. And I’d write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook.”
“I can think of no one more relevant and credible in the hip-hop community to build upon Def Jam’s fantastic legacy and move the company into its next groundbreaking era.”
“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 okay paying for it. It’s just the mindset right now.”
“I think the consumption of music is at an all-time high. But I think the ways that record companies are trying to monetize it is just all over the place. At the end of the day, music is in the clouds. Before, you could hold it, look at it, turn it around. Now, it’s just in the air.”
“So many people that I’ve seen can’t get clean water. It’s a crime.”
“The day Obama got elected, the gangsta became less relevant.”
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