Top 90 Mos Def Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The test in life nowadays is just trying to keep yourself charged up with enough good feeling. It’s like, “OK what am I going to do to feel really good today?” Not like, some chick or a drink...”

— Mos Def

52. “With guys I revere, like Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X, their look is less about style than purpose and the expression of beauty. It wasn’t just about being noticed, you know?”

— Mos Def

53. “There’s just some dysfunctionalism with artists.”

— Mos Def

54. “I’m trying to get low. People’s personalities can get in the way of their own work.”

— Mos Def

55. “I have no confidence issues with the impact or the quality of the music. No one in hip-hop, before this point and to this point, with all due respect, has done this.”

— Mos Def

56. “I like to read the ‘Financial Times’ when I’m traveling. ‘Economist.’ ‘Ad Busters.’”

— Mos Def

57. “I got my first exposure to Islam when I was 13.”

— Mos Def

58. “I feel like being into the beat of your own drum has become too prominent in the culture.”

— Mos Def

59. “It’s one thing to be the greatest; it’s another thing to be necessary. The best are the most necessary: those who take less than they give and love more than they hate.”

— Mos Def

60. “I just don’t think it’s very dignified to ask people to like you. You can just wind up being somebody’s ottoman.”

— Mos Def

61. “I don’t mind being black. I’m black out loud. It’s more than the people that they are, it’s the condition that they represent.”

— Mos Def

62. “I want to be necessary and do good works. I ain’t here to waste nobody’s time, because I don’t want you to waste mine.”

— Mos Def

63. “In the early ’90s, when I really started to find my voice, I was reading a lot of books, and I was moved by the writers, like Chinua Achebe, and I wanted to be able to write rhymes that were as potent as what I was reading.”

— Mos Def

64. “If you’re going to do Chuck Berry, you got to, you know, go all out, and the duck walk is just kind of you know, cursory. That’s like standing.”

— Mos Def

65. “I’ve been fortunate with my acting career. A lot of scripts come to me. I don’t mind auditioning if something that requires that, but I haven’t had to in awhile, which is a nice place to be ’cause I’ve been on quite a lot of auditions in my life.”

— Mos Def

66. “I’ve always loved music and I love the language, which is a huge reason why I’m part of theater.”

— Mos Def

67. “I thought everybody got into rock ‘n’ roll because they didn’t want to follow instructions.”

— Mos Def

68. “I get reminded a lot of the time that my life is a little bit different, but I’m just trying to keep it as regular as possible because I like it that way.”

— Mos Def

69. “That’s what I’ve been trying to strive for – to draw a clear picture, to open up a new dimension.”

— Mos Def

70. “I’m growing as an individual, but your always growing. All of my albums are snapshots of where I am artistically.”

— Mos Def

71. “It’s possible and available to any artist to be himself or herself on their own terms, to be accepted and embraced by black people. You don’t have to be a thug to get love from black people.”

— Mos Def

72. “I don’t wanna get into that space where a lot of guys now, their solo album is like eight or 10 songs with other people, you don’t get an idea of who this guy is. I just wasn’t interested in that.”

— Mos Def

73. “If ‘Life in Marvelous Times’ can’t get on the radio, then I don’t need to be on the radio.”

— Mos Def

74. “I don’t rap like nobody, I don’t try to sound like nobody.”

— Mos Def

75. “I’ve always loved rhyming. I love language.”

— Mos Def

76. “I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that’s happened in music in a long time. The people who are in charge of what people see or hear are afraid. What you hear on top 40 or what you see on BET or MTV is not a fair representation of what is really going on.”

— Mos Def

77. “Fame is like getting across the street. It’s like, if there’s nothing to be across the street for, it’s a pointless destination.”

— Mos Def

78. “What I take from writers I like is their economy – the ability to use language to very effective ends.”

— Mos Def

79. “I’m blacked than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle.”

— Mos Def

80. “Reckless capitalism kills black people.”

— Mos Def

81. “To me, the job of the artist is to provide a useful and intelligent vocabulary for the world to be able to articulate feelings they experience everyday, and otherwise wouldn’t have the means to express in a meaningful and useful way.”

— Mos Def

82. “I tell people all the time, I’ve always loved music and I love the language, which is a huge reason why I’m part of theater. But, I didn’t wanna do all of this. I would’ve been satisfied to do it, like, on the weekends among friends, and to have a regular job.”

— Mos Def

83. “To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.”

— Mos Def

84. “Twitter freaks me out. You have followers? It feels so obsessive and proprietary.”

— Mos Def

85. “You’ve got to validate every day. There are those who just put a stamp on it and say, “This is gonna be a good day and I’m not gonna let anything else make it a bad day.””

— Mos Def

86. “Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years it’s a name that the streets taught me a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment and I feel I’ve done quite a bit with that name and it’s time to expand and move on.”

— Mos Def

87. “I never had any ambitions of being a movie star or anything like that, but you know, this is nice.”

— Mos Def

88. “I’m inspired by playwrights, novelists, poets: The value of language has been a lifelong passion of mine. I enjoy it. I’m good at it.”

— Mos Def

89. “I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product, not a person, so I’ve been going by Yasiin since ’99. At first it was just for friends and family, but now I’m declaring it openly.”

— Mos Def

90. “I’m retiring the Mos Def name after 2011. I’m actually doing it.”

— Mos Def

91. “Record companies are not necessarily interested in you realizing your artistic dream. The bottom line is that they got to sell records.”

— Mos Def

92. “To me, it’s like happiness is about happiness, but happiness is a fight.”

— Mos Def

93. “I’m a passionate person. I’m a lot of things, like most people are. Most people are dynamic. The focus is not on me though, I’m a screen. The aim is to always keep myself in the position where the screen is clear.”

— Mos Def