Talib Kweli
Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common senseNext best thing I do a record with common senseCollection: Common Sense
The way I feel about Crunk Feminists. Here you have a bunch of bloggers who are not even quoting any feminists' works who are telling me what I can do better when I've been doing this as my life's work while y'all still in college! What are you talking about? And their criticism was of the idea that we should approach people like Rick Ross and Lil' Wayne with love when they have lyrics that we don't like, as opposed to approaching them with hate. That's their issue: How dare I say I approach Rick Ross with love!Collection: Hate
Love is blind, you just see bright lightCollection: Love Is
Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools.Collection: Race
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.Collection: Dope
Why give you the cure when the disease makes money?Collection: Rap
I look at the deejay thing as a tier thing. If I'm not going to compete on that level, I'm just going to do it as a hobby.Collection: Hobbies
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.Collection: Creativity
I just got a new manager. He's like, "So what do you want to do with the deejay thing?" I'm like, "The deejay thing for me is more my hobby." It's great when you can supplement your income, when you have a weekly or something, it's fun. It's really a hobby, because I don't want it to take away from what I do, which is emceeing.Collection: Fun
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.Collection: Education
Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s.Collection: Art
Harry Belafonte hit me to the Dream Defenders and I liked what they were about. When I asked them how I could help their movement, they said, "You can help by coming down here; you can tweet."Collection: Dream
I see that happening with hip hop purists now. Where you have an artist like a Kendrick [Lamar] or a Drake, who are really trying different things emotionally, different things musically, and on a mainstream level. And you have underground hip hop fans dissing it, for the simple fact that it's mainstream - not because what they're doing is whack, or what they're doing is not sincere.Collection: Artist
If lyrics sold then truth be told/I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z.Collection: Rich
When I was a teenager, the way some of these kids out here be actively gay, it would have been ridiculed in the hood. And now the hood is a bit more accepting. Begrudgingly accepting, but definitely more accepting than 20 years ago when I was a little kid. That doesn't mean that anybody should stop fighting for equality just because people are begrudgingly a little more accepting.Collection: Teenager
I'm not an artist that has a big, huge radio record that's going to be on BET. I'm not, at this point, gunning for like, "Oh, I'm gonna kill them in the first week." But as people slowly discover the album they realize it's better than a lot of what they've been listening to all year.Collection: Artist
I don't care if Rick Ross is 40 years old -- he's a misguided 40-year-old person.Collection: Years
There just needs to be a gay rapper who's better than everybody. That's when that question will no longer be able to be asked.Collection: Gay
Consider me the entity within the industry without a history of spitting the epitome of stupidity.Collection: Rap
We send young white boys to the Army. We're sending young black boys to the prisons.Collection: Army
I have such respect for the art of deejaying. I hesitate to even call myself a deejay.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Zero
What else is stop and frisk? These neighborhoods are unsafe not because there's not enough cops illegally frisking people. They're not safe because of economic conditions. They're not safe because of all types of things in the government that people like Mike Bloomberg and Ray Kelly should be looking to fix instead of randomly searching kids in the hood. If you go to a college campus and you do stop and frisk, you're going to find a lot of drugs there, too.Collection: Kids
It’s very seductive to focus on what you don’t like as opposed to celebrating all that it is that you do.Collection: Focus
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.Collection: Cousin
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.Collection: Artist
They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for.Collection: Writing
If you go to a college campus and you do stop and frisk, you're going to find a lot of drugs there too.Collection: College
Unfortunately hip-hop is so competitive that in order for fringe groups to get in, you gotta be better than whoever's the best. So before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible.Collection: Rapper
By the time you get into other kinds of music - R&B, country, or whatever - it becomes something that's romantic. It becomes something unattainable. Never-ending undying love. And in hip hop, we're still taking direct inspiration.Collection: Country
"Art Imitates life," of course, is that phrase by Oscar Wilde. I called that song "Art Imitates Life" because Oh No was in the studio and he actually came up with that hook. When I was trying to figure out a name for the record, it just kind of made sense.Collection: Song
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.Collection: New York
I feel like I have way more resources, way more experience. I'm better. But my fans romanticize the earlier stuff, and I don't think it's just like a nostalgia thing of "He's not as good" - I think it's because that earlier stuff was aggressively marketed as a lifestyle to them.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Wall
Everybody could write, deejay, rap. Everybody could do it all.Collection: Rap
I feel like people mislead themselves when they tell themselves they're into me because of the lyrics. From my vantage point, people aren't into me because of the content, because of the lyrics. Because there's a million of rappers who have great content.Collection: Rapper
Just because someone has great content doesn't mean you like them as a rapper.Collection: Mean
I think people are into me because of my music choices and my musicality.Collection: Thinking
With Prisoner of Conscience, the focus was - I've worked with Madlib, High Tech, Kanye West, J Dilla. I feel like I've worked with some of the greatest of all time. That's been overlooked. That's been overshadowed by the weight of the lyrics.Collection: Focus
Or is it the mind state that's ill, creating crime rates to fill the new prisons the buildCollection: Creating
People didn't really take white rappers seriously until Eminem, because he was better than everybody. Like female emcees, you need to be like Lauryn Hill or Nicki Minaj or killing everything before somebody takes you seriously.Collection: Rapper
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.Collection: Cds
I like the fact that I can rep New York, but my style does not - I'm not trapped in a New York thing. I can do art songs with other artists and it's seamless.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Artist
God gave us music, so we play with our words.Collection: Rap