I was hopeless, now I'm on Hope Road.
Everything we do should be a result of our gratitude for what God has done for us.
I get out, I get out of all your boxes.
Every day is a lesson in focus for me, and not buying into the world's concept of what you have to be. I really try every day to be individual and not just in my style or my look or my music, but in my approach to life.
My whole life at a certain point was studio, hotel, stage, hotel, stage, studio, stage, hotel, studio, stage. I was expressing everything from my past, everything that I had experienced prior to that studio stage time, and it was like you have to go back to the well, in order to give someone something to drink. I felt like a cistern, dried up and like there was nothing more. And it was so beautiful.
In my family, there was not an abundance of wealth, but there was an abundance of love. So there was always humor, and there was joy and there was comfort and there was this environment just to have a good time.
Over-commercialization and its resulting restrictions and limitations can be very damaging and distorting to the inherent nature of the individual. I did not deliberately abandon my fans, nor did I deliberately abandon any responsibilities.
We can't plan life. All we can do is be available for it.
My concept of successful living is escaping the matrix, as we've talked about. It has very little to do with what people think success is. I actually feel successful right now, even though I don't have an album out, or a video or a song on the radio, because I'm trying to be obedient to His will.
Love and this close-knit family structure really helped to give me the confidence. To know that you have family to go back to is a help. It doesn't always happen biologically. Sometimes God gives you family in other forms, but I was very blessed. I have a very strong biological family.
You might win some, but you just lost one.
Let optimists rule the world.
I wrote these words for everyone who struggles in their youth. Who won't accept deception instead of what is truth. It seems we lose the game, before we even start to play. Who made these rules? We're so confused. Easily led astray.
I believe God will make a way.
I'm trying to be a loving and caring mother, a loving and caring wife-to-be, a loving and caring daughter, a loving and caring friend, a responsible person. And every day is another opportunity for me to be successful at that.
Let me be patient, let me be kind, make me unselfish, without being blind, though I may suffer, I'll envy it not and endure what comes cause he is all that I got
We should always be aspiring to know more, and to better ourselves, and to improve ourselves. To improve ourselves, because that's how we improve the world around us, by working within us.
Miscommunication leads to complication.
The only way to know is to Live, Learn, and Grow
I get out, I get out of all your boxes. I get out, you can't hold me in these chains. I'll get out. Father free me from this bondage. Knowin' my condition is the reason I must change
I don't know anybody that's not emotionally unstable or schizophrenic.
It's more important to be righteous than to be right.
Love is an incredible thing but we don't know love like we should. Unconditional love we don't know it because if a person stops stimulating us, we stop loving them.
We don't want people to have expectations of us, but then we have expectations of everybody else.
Let me break it down for you again, You know I only say it because I'm truly genuine: Don't be a hard rock when you really are a gem.
I knew his life deserved a chance/But everybody told me to be smart/Look at your career they said/Lauren, baby use your head/But instead I chose to use my heart.
As artists, we have an opportunity to help the public evolve, raise consciousness and awareness, teach, heal, enlighten and inspire in ways the democratic process may not be able to touch. So we keep it moving.
Hip-Hop started out in the heart
I think everything happens in time. There's a time for everything. There's a time to be in a group, and there's a time to be solo.
I think the work ethic that was established in my family was something very important. If you plant the seed, if you sow sparingly and reap sparingly. If you sow in abundance you'll reap in abundance.
Nobody's going to force me to do something against my will. What do I owe anybody that I should submit my will to them?
There are a lot of young black girls who I meet in my travels who don't have a lot of self-esteem. So if I communicate to them that they're beautiful, no white person should find fault in that. It doesn't mean that young white girls aren't beautiful, because they are just as beautiful.
That strong mother doesn't tell her cub, Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in.
Hip-Hop isn't just music, it is also a spiritual movement of the blacks! You can't just call Hip-Hop a trend!
As long as I remember that the glory is His and not my own. When I confuse that, I get in trouble. We think that we glorify ourselves, and the object is to glorify God first, and in doing that you become glorified, you get glorified.
My mother gave me a piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. The correction was the meat, the substance. And then she would sandwich that, sandwich that with another piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. That was very important in shaping and molding our morality, our understanding of ourselves, making sure that we didn’t think we were better than or less than anyone, feeling no more worthy or no less worthy than anyone else.
What was freely given to me, I freely give.
My mother has all my awards, because if I walked downstairs every day and saw all my achievements it would be so easy to become complacent.
It could all be so simple, but you'd rather make it hard, loving you is like a battle, and we both end up with scars
When you're young and everything dramatic is exciting, you start to believe that hype that, in order to be an artist, you have to suffer. I've graduated from that school.
The sweetest thing I've ever known was like the kiss on the collarbone, the soft caress of happiness, the way you walk, your style of dress, I wish I didn't get so weak, oh baby just to hear you speak, makes me argue just to see how much your in love with me
This life is a process of learning.
It's silly when girls sell their souls because it's in.
It's funny how money change a situation.
I had an economic system imposed on me.
See fantasy is what people want, but reality is what they need. And I just retired from the fantasy part.
Tell me who I've got to be, to get some reciprocity
I can give away everything I posses, but am without love, and I have no happiness
Consequence is no coincidence.
In my travels all over the world, I have come to realize that what distinguishes one child from another is not ability, but access. Access to education, access to opportunity, access to love.
Anything that is not growing is dead.
Never underestimate those who you scar.
I find, even though it's raining, I just go outside. I look outside and I'm just so blessed to see it and to experience it, because for such a long time I was just indoors.
Place your attention 6 inches above your crown. God is breathing in and out there.
Never be afraid of not knowing. Find out.
I hope that by people seeing the result of freedom that they'll want some, too.
I think what people are attracted to about me, if anything, is my passion. People got exposed to my passion through music and song first.
To those supporters who were told that I abandoned them, that is untrue. I abandoned greed, corruption, and compromise, never you, and never the artistic gifts and abilities that sustained me.
Everyday is another chance to get things right.
If you love something and if you're committed and diligent - the things happen!
Sometimes we all need to take time and give thanks.
Loving you is like a Song I replay every 3 Minutes and 30 Seconds of every Day.
I play my enemies like a game of chess
My concept of successful living is escaping the matrix.
A friend once said, and I found to be true,That everyday people, they lie to God too,So what makes you think, that they won't lie to you.
See no one loves you more than me...and no one ever will
It's emotional warfare telling the people we love, the most, the truth about ourselves.
Tomorrow is always another day to make things right.
Everything is everything What is meant to be, will be After winter, must come spring Change, it comes eventually
Don't be a hard rock when you really are a gem!
The only help I need to live, is unprofessional. The only wealth I have to give, is not material. And if you need much more than that, I'm not available.
I used to play my records aloud until one night my mother was like, "This is too loud. I'm not having it," and so I put on headphones. But the headphones didn't stretch all the way to my bed from the record player, so I had to sleep on the floor in order to hear the records. I slept on the floor right next to the record player until I was probably 19 years old.
And deep in my heart. The answer, it was in me. And I made up my mind. To define my own destiny
I am no longer going to become a fictional character to please people. That's too much work.
I don't want to be religious, I want to be spiritual. Anybody can be religious. Some people jog religiously. You don't want to be that, you want to be spiritual. You want to have a relationship with God as opposed to doing what everyone else does.
The less I have, the freer I am to do whatever I want to do.
I consider myself a crayon... I may not be your favorite color but one day you'll need me to complete your picture.
A lot of us are too busy focusing on what we think people want to hear, as opposed to just saying what's in our hearts.
God teaches me about reality, so when he tells me to do something, I do, because I'm led to.
In my life the most influential people are people who are sort of brought to me, as opposed to people I seek out.
Everyone is in the same situation, at different levels and in different places.
Think black love, think universal love. Just think love.
Reality is easy. It's deception that's the hard work.
I know you don't wanna hear my opinion, There come many paths and you must choose one. And if you don't change then the rain soon come. See, you might win some, but you just lost one.
I was very confused. I didn't understand the difference between rebellion against God and rebellion against the system that's not God.
You improve yourself and light up the corner that you live on. You may not touch a gazillion lives, but you can light up your own space, light up your home.
Let’s love ourselves, then we can’t fail, To make a better situation. Tomorrow, our seeds will grow, All we need is dedication!
I've leaned on God for so long. "Hey, God, you just gave me this gift, and I'm just going to go out there and sing." But I'm realizing how much larger and how expansive my gift becomes when I actually pay attention to it and try to practice and try to perfect it.
I am just beginning to be more comfortable with my identity.
To me that's a reflection of love, when someone can see you enjoying yourself, and want to participate, or want to encourage, or want to help you to do something that you enjoy.
You could get the money, you can get the power, but keep your eyes on the final hour.
I never did anything I'm really ashamed of.
Whenever we submit our will to someone else’s opinion, a part of us dies
Everybody has a choice. I am not here to shove my light down everybody's throat. For those who don't want it, I have nothing to defend.
Life is continued work. It's constant learning. The whole concept of retirement I don't even buy into. We should constantly be working. Maybe not physically working, but we could be spiritually, emotionally working toward bettering ourselves and bettering the lives of others around us.
Hypocrites always wanna play innocent
When I create music, the feeling that you get... I get first. You [the listener] have a delayed experience with the feeling I initially get when I have a creative insight. Not just the voice, but all the creativity - the production, the idea, the concept, the music involved. There is a high. There is an emotional experience that happens when everything comes together... I made music as consistently as I did, especially back in the day, because it made me feel so good... When everything is on, it's a wonderful feeling.
I need to be surrounded by people as passionate and as dedicated as I am.
If the entire week is a battlefield, reading the Bible is sort of like that parachute with the box of reserves that come in the middle of the war: food and water and the toothbrush and toilet paper.
If everyone is a product of this society, who will say the things that need to be said, and do the things that need to be done, without compromise? Truth will never start out popular in a world more concerned with marketability than righteousness. It will initially suffer ridicule and even violence - yet ultimately it is undeniable. All of humanity is living in a dream world, but suffering real consequences.
I ran very fast in the wrong direction.
Wisdom is better than silver and gold
We've got to protect the music and make sure it never gets exploited.
The sweetest thing I've ever known was like the kiss on the collarbone.
How you gon' win when you ain't right within. Uh uh come again
Real religion is no religion at all.
We should constantly be aspiring to reach higher and higher and higher. We should never be comfortable where we are.
For the past several years, I have remained what others would consider underground. I did this in order to build a community of people, like-minded in their desire for freedom and the right to pursue their goals and lives without being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex with a completely different agenda.
Now I may have faith/ to make mountains fall/ But if I lack love/ then I am nothin' at all
You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.
I had to confront my fears and master my every demonic thought about inferiority, insecurity, or the fear of being black, young, and gifted in this Western culture.
Let me be patient, let me be kind, make me unselfish, without being blind.
Tomorrow, our seeds will grow. All we need is dedication.
I have inner peace. It's a different person.
We don't know love like we should. We always talk about 'I have unconditional love' unconditional love is... we don't even know it. Because if a person stops stimulating us, we stop loving them. You're not interesting to talk to anymore, goodbye. But that real love, that love that sometimes is difficult, difficult to have. That's that love. And that's a confidence builder.
I am up there onstage alone with that guitar. I don't have to consider no one else and whether they are comfortable. I need very little.
Once you compromise yourself in one way, you compromise yourself in another way. And you've just opened the door to compromise, mediocrity, settling.
I don't need anybody to market or promote me. If people don't want to hear this music, then it's not for them. You cannot please everybody.
If I'd known white people were going to buy my last album, I never would have recorded it.
From the first time someone says, Who do you think you are? we learn how to repress.
I don't buy into that whole concept of success that I have this mountain with this moat around it and then I get into my big car and drive to my destination and never see people. That's not my concept of success.
When I was working, and when I was making substantial amounts of money, I always filed and paid my taxes. This only stopped, when it was necessary to withdraw from society, in order to guarantee the safety and well-being of myself and my family.
We call ourselves creators and we just copy.
Be honest, brutally honest. That is what's going to maintain relationships.
I get really afraid of those little comforts, those things that make us feel like we did something great, because I've done nothing. I've done nothing. I mean that sincerely.
