Top 100 Talib Kweli Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I think people are into me because of my music choices and my musicality.”

— Talib Kweli

52. “I gotta be dope first. I gotta be appealing to your senses, and to what you like first. Then the message happens. Then you relate to the message.”

— Talib Kweli

53. “Honestly, you have to take care of yourself. That’s probably something I have learned on the road.”

— Talib Kweli

54. “If you look at my career, doing albums with Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake, Gucci Mane and Lil Wayne or KRS-One and Jean Grae, I can’t be pigeonholed.”

— Talib Kweli

55. “Hip hop is at its essence a folk music, because it speaks the language that people are still speaking at ground zero, it speaks the language that people speak on the streets.”

— Talib Kweli

56. “My kids are the most inspiring thing that pushes me. It used to be because they were born, and I had to take care of them. Now it’s because my son raps, and he’s better than me. So now I gotta keep up with him, you know what I’m saying?”

— Talib Kweli

57. “Hip hop has always been, for us, for artists who are pure to the craft – any place overseas, whether it’s Australia, any place in Asia, Germany, Africa, it becomes something where you can still go and work. Hip hop is an import culture. We’re spoiled by it here. It’s homegrown.”

— Talib Kweli

58. “I think once you’re in the public eye, whether you’re a boss, a teacher or whatever you do, that you’re automatically in the position of role model. You have people looking up to you, so whether you choose to accept it or not is a different question.”

— Talib Kweli

59. “Just because someone has great content doesn’t mean you like them as a rapper.”

— Talib Kweli

60. “Hip-hop isn’t as complex as a woman is.”

— Talib Kweli

61. “Everybody could write, deejay, rap. Everybody could do it all.”

— Talib Kweli

62. “War is not civilized.”

— Talib Kweli

63. “Why give you the cure when the disease makes money?”

— Talib Kweli

64. “Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn’t go the way of jazz.”

— Talib Kweli

65. “I have a luxury of people coming to see me whether I play for the crowd or not. I don’t take that lightly.”

— Talib Kweli

66. “I don’t think that early hip hop stood out to be a social critique. A lot of fans of mine think that hip hop’s ultimate responsibility is to critique social structures.”

— Talib Kweli

67. “As far as being on a major label, some labels get it and get what they have to do, and some labels don’t. I don’t think the label I’m on necessarily gets it, but I think over time they’re gonna have to.”

— Talib Kweli

68. “I like collaboration because, first of all, I’m good at writing lyrics. I don’t know how to make beats. I don’t play instruments. I’m not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it’s still a collaboration.”

— Talib Kweli

69. “Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools.”

— Talib Kweli

70. “I was always rhyming and doing it for the love before I found out I was gonna have children and when I found out, doing it for the love wasn’t enough.”

— Talib Kweli

71. “I think its man’s nature to go to war and fight.”

— Talib Kweli

72. “I met Mos Def around that time but I didn’t hook up with him until I was about 17 or 18.”

— Talib Kweli

73. “The responsibility of an artist is to be honest with themselves.”

— Talib Kweli

74. “You see somebody rapping and you’re like, “Nah, my cousin can do that.” You’re spoiled by the experience. Overseas, it’s still something that people can appreciate.”

— Talib Kweli

75. “I’d like to work with Outkast, I’d like to work with RZA, I’d like to work with Timbaland, York, a whole bunch of people.”

— Talib Kweli

76. “My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl.”

— Talib Kweli

77. “As far as my New York influence, one thing I’m proud of in my career is, I rep Brooklyn, New York all day. But people don’t look at my music as New York music. People consider my music underground music.”

— Talib Kweli

78. “It’s very seductive to focus on what you don’t like as opposed to celebrating all that it is that you do.”

— Talib Kweli

79. “But it becomes disrespectful when the artist’s process is not respected.”

— Talib Kweli

80. “Fortunately, artists can live off their works, if you’re creative at how you do it. If you just depend on the videos and the radio, you’re at a loss.”

— Talib Kweli

81. “And you know, art as commerce, doesn’t really make too much sense, they don’t go together.”

— Talib Kweli

82. “I will never do a record without some sense of responsibility.”

— Talib Kweli

83. “I don’t feel comfortable making empty music.”

— Talib Kweli

84. “Let me finish my music, and let me present it the way I want to present it. And then share it, put it online, do whatever you want to do after that.”

— Talib Kweli

85. “I was kind of just too lazy to take my money out of the bank until I saw how Citi Bank responded to Occupy Wall Street.”

— Talib Kweli

86. “A true artist does not depend on radio for success. A true fan does not let radio determine what they support.”

— Talib Kweli

87. “I not only wanted to showcase lyrical skills but also continue to drop knowledge on the hiphop community. Im looking to elevate through my music, and through my music I educate.”

— Talib Kweli

88. “The only way for me to be an artist is to be honest in my craft. If I veer from that, I’m not giving the investors what they want. Sometimes it’s my job as an artist to know what I want to do, even when the fans tell me different.”

— Talib Kweli

89. “I support the idea that artists have to make a stand. I’m with that – you’re putting the discussion on the table and you’re letting people know. You’re being brave as an artist and responsible to the community.”

— Talib Kweli

90. “But Rawkus is integral to what I do, because the cats who started Rawkus are the first ones who really saw my vision, and gave me a platform to get it out there, so I’m definitely totally grateful for that.”

— Talib Kweli

91. “I think music sharing of any kind is great.”

— Talib Kweli

92. “I listened to a mind joint, and I wanted to do my own version of it, and what you hear on my mixtape is my take on what the whole CD sounds like.”

— Talib Kweli

93. “But you have to be creative on how you sell yourself and market yourself.”

— Talib Kweli

94. “My fans like to be romantic. I feel like I’m creating at least at the same level or even a higher level of creativity than I was at twenty-one. I’ve gotten better as an artist.”

— Talib Kweli

95. “Homosexuality in hip-hop is an extension of homosexuality in the black community. The black community is very, very conservative when it comes to homosexuality, and I don’t mean conservative in the good way, like we’re saving money. I mean very intolerant.”

— Talib Kweli

96. “Even an independent label is looking for a hit, they’re not looking for a record that’s not gonna do well.”

— Talib Kweli

97. “As an artist, I have to be a leader of my fans, not like follow them. Because if I chose to follow them, you know, they could do it.”

— Talib Kweli

98. “You know, there’s a lot of activism that doesn’t deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle.”

— Talib Kweli

99. “It doesn’t get any more underground, conscious or indie than Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, but because they got a couple of really big pop hits, actually some of the biggest pop hits that hip-hop has ever seen, people are missing that part of their story. People are not counting that blessing.”

— Talib Kweli

100. “The problem with our role is Americans live in a world of illusion.”

— Talib Kweli