Jay-Z
I jack, I rob, I sin. Aw man, I'm Jackie Robinson 'Cept when I run base, I dodge the penCollection: Running
I get my by any means on, whenever there's a drought get your umbrellas out because that's when I brainstorm.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Rap
All these ways we classify things as R&B and hip-hop and rock... It's bullshit. It's all music. If you put yourself in that box, then you won't be able to hear that it's all music at its soul.Collection: Rocks
One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank, they don't like to think of themselves as poor.Collection: Country
Kurt Cobain OD'd on heroin before committing suicide, but he also OD'd on fame. Cobain was like Basquiat: They both wanted to be famous, and were brilliant enough to make it happen. But then what? Drug addicts kill themselves trying to get that feeling they got from their first high, looking for an experience they'll never get again. In his suicide note, Cobain asked himself, "Why don't you just enjoy it?" and then answered, "I don't know!" It's amazing how much of a mindfuck success can be.Collection: Suicide
Well I'm not just gon' go and do rap songs. I wanna touch, and maybe help, and see what I can do in these areas.' As I start looking around me, looking at things in ways that I can become helpful, starting at the first thing, water. Something as simple as water.Collection: Song
I spring train in the winter, around early December...Collection: Spring
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!"Collection: People
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.Collection: Determination
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.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Girl
Hip-hop is a perfect mix between poetry and boxing.Collection: Boxing
[Banning marriage equality is] discrimination, plain and simple. It's really not about votes. It's about people. I think it's the right thing to do as a human being.Collection: Simple
I'm a person that works off of music. I let the music dictate the direction.Collection: Personal Growth
Never prayed to God, I prayed to Gotti, that's right it's wicked, that's life I live it. Ain't askin' for forgiveness for my sins. I gotta get my soul right, I gotta get these Devils out my life. Lord forgive him, He got them dark forces in. connected to the high power. 666. I can introduce you to evil.Collection: Dark
As sure as this Earth is turnin, souls burnin / In search of higher learnin, turnin in every direction seeking direction / My moms cryin cause her insides are dyin / Her son tryin her patience, keep her heart racin / A million beats a minute, I know I push you to your limit / But it's this game, love—I'm caught up all in it / They make it so you can't prevent it, never give it / You gotta take it, can't fake it, I keep it authenticCollection: Mom
If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts — but it’s not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it’s any better — but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst. My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.Collection: Hurt
For me, being with Obama or having dinner with Bill Clinton... It's crazy. It's mind-blowing, because where I come from is just another world. We were just ignored by politicians, by America in general.Collection: Crazy
So many people that I've seen can't get clean water. It's a crime.Collection: People
I really just like breaking down the barriers, whether it means doing an album with Linkin Park, an album with R. Kelly, or playing at the Brandenburg Gate with Bono.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Artist
But this is one of the things that makes rap at its best so human. It doesn't force you to pretend to be only one thing or another, to be a saint or a sinner. It recognizes that you can be true to yourself and still have unexpected dimensions and opposing ideas. Having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is the most common thing in the world. The real bullshit is when you act like you don't have contradictions inside you, that you're so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places.Collection: Real
For me, the challenge is just making great albums, because talent - and writing in general - is not tangible. There's no expiration date on it. At the same time, you might wake up tomorrow and be unable to write music.Collection: Writing
I'm gonna fight, and I'm gonna make something out of nothing. That's pretty much the American dream. So, for me, the realization that I could speak to people like that came first on a small scale. Then it just started happening. I started having this vibration.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Artist
On the night he died - he was twenty-seven - Basquiat had been planning to see a Run-DMC show. When people asked him what his art was about, he'd hit them with the same three words: "Royalty, heroism, and the streets.Collection: Running
If you want the old me, go buy my old albums.Collection: Albums
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.Collection: Beautiful
I dumb down for my audience and double my dollars...Collection: Dollars
Whoever said that artists shouldn't pay attention to their business was probably someone w/their hand in some artist's pocket.Collection: Artist
The day Obama got elected, the gangsta became less relevant.Collection: Gangsta
just when i thought i had everything, i lost it allCollection: Lost
I use a lot of double meanings. I hide 'em like Easter eggs.Collection: Easter
I believe excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over.Collection: Believe
My tears is tatted, my rag in my pocket / Im just looking for love, I know somebody got itCollection: Tears
I'm trying to tell the story in the most clear, concise, and truthful way, taking those everyday words and phrases and capturing them in a way that they become something else.Collection: Everyday
Is to have had and lost/Better than not having at all?Collection: Lost
I wrote this [Most Kings] before MJ died, and his death only proves my point: When he was alive, the King of Pop, people were tireless in taking him down, accepting as truth every accusation people made against him, assuming the worst until they drove him away. When he died, suddenly he was beloved again - people realized that the charges against him might really have been bogus, and that the skin lightening was really caused by a disease, and that his weirdness was part of his artistry. But when he was alive and on top, they couldn't wait to bring him down.Collection: Kings
[T]he truth is you don't need some external demon to take control of you to turn you into a raging, money-obsessed sociopath, you only need to let loose the demons you already have inside of you.Collection: Needs
Boxing is a glorious sport to watch and boxers are incredible, heroic athletes, but it's also, to be honest, a stupid game to play. Even the winners can end up with crippling brain damage. In a lot of ways, hustling is the same. But you learn something special from playing the most difficult games, the games where winning is close to impossible and losing is catastrophic: You learn how to compete as if your life depended on it. That's the lesson I brought with me to the so-called "legitimate" world.Collection: Sports
I like a girl who spend a little cash for her shoes.Collection: Girl
Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.Collection: Powerful
I am not a businessman. I am a business, man.Collection: Men