Talib kweli quotes

Young kids should be doing music that has shock value. They'll grow out of it.

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.

The thing is, allies is people who are friends, people you can rely on in the struggle. You're not always going to agree with your allies. For instance, Stevie Wonder I feel like is my ally when it comes to this Florida situation, but I don't agree with his strategy. That doesn't mean he isn't an ally.

Well if somebody's giving me a script, I'll consider it. But it's not something I'm chasing.

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.

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.

When you shine bright, some won't enjoy the shadow you cast.

When you have a voice and a platform and you know better, it becomes your moral obligation to support that community. And by extension, you're supporting your family.

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.

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

If lyrics sold then truth be told/I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z.

I think hip hop is a dance music that's rebellious by nature.

Being called a conscious rapper is quite a compliment. It's a great thing to be. But as an artist, my nature is to not be in a box.

I don't care if Rick Ross is 40 years old -- he's a misguided 40-year-old person.

If I focus on being an activist and my job is to be a rapper, I'm not going to be as good of a rapper. I need to focus on hip-hop and focus on making the music, so that when the activists come to me and they need my voice to create a platform, then I've got enough people listening to me. Not because I'm conscious, but because I'm dope.

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.

God gave us music, so we play with our words.

Nowadays rap artists coming half-hearted, Commercial like pop, or underground like black markets. Where were you the day hip-hop died? Is it too early to mourn? Is it too late to ride?

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

I ignored your aura but it grabbed me by the hand, like the moon pulled the tide, and the tide pulled the sand.

If you ain't using all the talents God provided you with For the betterment of Man, understand, You ain't nothing but a waste.

Or is it the mind state that's ill, creating crime rates to fill the new prisons the build

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.

Who you? Your name smaller than fine grains in couscous It's the highest calibre, your calibre is deuce deuce

No one likes to be treated like people in minority communities. What it's saying is that because you're poor, because you live in a neighborhood that deals with oppressed conditions, you deserve to be treated like a criminal. In our Constitution it says you have the right to live without illegal search and seizure.

I have enough rhythm to blend at this point. I have enough rhythm to blend one song into another. But man, I have such respect for the art of deejaying. I hesitate to even call myself a deejay.

Woman are complex creatures.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I'm not looking to set a standard... but, I believe I have offered a challenge to others with my work.

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.

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

You gotta get back to your essence, Use your gifts and share your presence, Don't count your dollars 'til you count your blessings.

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.

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.

Do the math: You never settle for less than the whole if you knew the half.

You gotta eat right, you gotta have healthy habits, you know, and balance out your decadence with a healthy lifestyle during the day.

Life is a beautiful struggle.

I don't feel comfortable making empty music.

We get high on all types of drugs when, all you really need is Love

So I just had to step up how I was doing it and the moment that I stepped up and the moment I focused all my energy on that is when things started to happen. So there's a direct relationship between my inspiration and my output.

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.

There are staples to my show. I have to be conscious about switching things up because I know people who saw me last year will say, 'He did that last time.' But if certain things work, they work.

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.

We commute to computers Spirits stay mute while you eagles spread rumors We survivalists, turned to consumers.

When I look at the arc of my career, my focus is on lyricism, right? I own that.

I'm spinning records and I look across the restaurant and I see somebody who looks Asian. And I'm like, "Yo, that looks like Yoko Ono." I'm like, oh, I can just meet - that's going to be great. Then I look carefully and I'm like, "That's not Yoko Ono, that's Bruno Mars." And it was Bruno Mars. That just happened recently. I was bugging out. Because that was totally not Yoko Ono at all.

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.

My rhymes are like shot clocks, interstate cops and blood clots, my point is your flow gets stopped.

What's more condescending and corny than someone telling you how much more money they have than you and telling you basically, 'I don't care about poor people,' which is a large part of what you hear of corporate hip-hop on the radio.

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.

A lot of these people, these program directors, just like anybody else in the world, even though they're supposed to be leaders in the world, they're followers. They follow what they think someone else is doing, instead of trying to blaze a trail.

To be honest, that whole exchange with Crunk Feminist actually made me write the song because I realize there's a lot of young women out there so hurt by the misogynistic images in hip-hop they paint it with such a broad brush stroke that they think anybody that defends hip-hop is defending misogyny.

I have such respect for the art of deejaying. I hesitate to even call myself a deejay.

Ain't nobody making music to not be heard and the easiest way to be heard is to be on the radio, but you should never compromise who you are, your values or your morals.

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!

The way I see it, if people truly love my music, they will support me in some way down the road.

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

But it becomes disrespectful when the artist's process is not respected.

Honestly, you have to take care of yourself. That's probably something I have learned on the road.

I tour whether I have album out or not. I tour more than any other hip-hop artist.

I think the biggest problem in our country is mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex. From the Rockefeller drug laws to stand your ground to stop and frisk, all these are pointing people, especially and disproportionately black and brown people, towards the criminal-justice system. It's depleting whole generations of people.

But there's so many things in life like women, like children, like God and family that transcends the world of hip-hop.

Once you're signed to a label you compromise.

Michael Bloomberg is a sensible guy. He's just privileged. He's a goddamn billionaire, and he or his family members have never had to deal with anything as remotely degrading as stop and frisk. So he has no point of reference.

I started rapping because I wanted people to hear what I have to say, I want as many people to hear me as possible, and I do everything in my power to make that pop.

Why give you the cure when the disease makes money?

We speak the love language, they speak from pain and anguish. Some don't love theyselves, so they perception is tainted.

And you know, art as commerce, doesn't really make too much sense, they don't go together.

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.

I feel like your city - with hip hop in particular, because we're always beating our chest and shouting where we're from - your city is just as influential as your parents. Even the grimy, hardcore gangster rap from New York - KRS-One and Wu Tang, the stuff acknowledges it.

Now people won't beat you up if you are gay; they might just talk behind your back.

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.

You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.

A flower that grow in the ghetto know more about survival than the one from fresh meadows.

Crunk Feminist Collective, I think, is a noble endeavor, and any group of young women coming together to uplift women, especially being run by women of color, I have no choice but to support that. But they're dead wrong on me.

The founder of Crunk Feminists is a Christian. If you claim to be a Christian, but then you attack somebody for saying you should approach a problem with love, you're not being a true Christian.

We send young white boys to the Army. We're sending young black boys to the prisons.

Love is blind, you just see bright light

Consider me the entity within the industry without a history of spitting the epitome of stupidity.

I look at the deejay thing as something - I'm good at it because I have my own music. I have enough rhythm to blend at this point.

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

Artists make art for themselves. Art is an honest expression. Artists who pander to their fans by trying to make music "for" their fans make empty, transparent art. The true fan does not want you to make music for them, they want you to make music for you, because that's the whole reason they fell in love with you in the first place.

Artists look at the environment, and the best artists correctly diagnose the problem. I'm not saying artists can't be leaders, but that's not the job of art, to lead. Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte - there are artists all through history who have become leaders, but that was already in them, nothing to do with their art.

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

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."

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.

I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.

I think music sharing of any kind is great.

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.

You make knowledge relevant to life and you make it important for children to learn things that will really relate to things going on in their lives, and not abstract.

Hip-hop isn't as complex as a woman is.

I think all those artists are artists who are appreciated because you believe their words and you appreciate their honesty in their music. If you don't appreciate the honesty in the music, the beat can be fly as hell but you'll never give an emcee props.

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

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.

War is not civilized.

Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.

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.

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.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

You have to know when to be arrogant. You have to when to be humble. You have to know when to be hard and you have to know when to be soft.

Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common senseNext best thing I do a record with common sense

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

I remember looking back on a photo of me... wearing a suit that was, like, two sizes too big for me. I think a lot of guys don't know what fits.

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.

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.

People consider Black Star a great album, and I think it's a classic album. But the fact is, both me and Mos Def have made better albums since Black Star.

These niggaz ain't thugs, the real thugs is the government. Don't matter if you Independent, Democrat or Republican, Niggaz politickin' the street, get into beef, Start blastin'...now a new cat is executive chief.

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

The most important time in history is - NOW - the present, So count your blessings cause time can't define the essence.

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.

My fondest memories were watching the Beastie Boys get prepped to come on stage. They had a lot of antics and they play a lot of basketball... then they were giving out cameras to the crowd, and performing from the bleachers. The most important thing I learned was that you control your crowd, not the other way around.

I think its man's nature to go to war and fight.

When I met you it was magic... We polar opposites, but attracted like we was magnets.

The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.

Hip-hop is a vehicle.

They hope for the Apocalypse like a self-fulfilling prophecy Tell me when do we stop it? Do they ask you your religion before you rent an apartment? Is the answer burning Korans so that we can defend Islamics?

I try to count the blessings rather than the problems.

Just because no one can understand how you speak, Don't necessarily mean that what you be sayin is deep.

My parents are my biggest influences. My parents and my city. Brooklyn, New York, New York City, the community I grew up. I don't feel like I'm special in that. I feel like that's everybody.

Life without knowledge is death in disguise.

So I think hip-hop is moving and is going to continue to move in the direction of rappers just being honest with themselves, whether you're talking about Common and Mos Def or Nas and 50 cent.