Talib Kweli Quotes

I think the line is where you're in the studio, you're creating. That belongs to you as an artist. Nothing should taint that. I shouldn't be thinking about what the fans want, I shouldn't be thinking about what the radio wants, what the label wants, what your manager wants, a song for the chicks, a song for the street.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Things are fluid in this world, and if you don't remain fluid, you get lost in the sauce.

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

Life without knowledge is death in disguise ...

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

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

I think music sharing of any kind is great.

Love is blind, you just see bright light

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.

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.

Before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible.

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 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.

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

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.

You know, I've learned a lot from every person I've collaborated with, from Madlib to Jean Grae and Hi-Tek, to Mos to DJ Quik, to even somebody like Jermaine Dupri. I've taken something important away from every experience.

"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.

If you go to a college campus and you do stop and frisk, you're going to find a lot of drugs there too.

Hi-Tek is on three or four songs on the new record.

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

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.

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.

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

I don't feel comfortable making empty music.

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.

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

You'll be fooled if you only get your hip-hop from the mainstream, you know. The things that move people are not just found in the mainstream cultures. And when we talk about hip-hop in general, hip-hop's basically preoccupied with life.

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

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.

If I'm performing with a DJ, it's all on me to draw the energy. I like the camaraderie of a band.

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.

I think people are into me because of my music choices and my musicality.

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

My personal take on politics is I deal with social situations and cultural situations in my music and in my life. I have said on record many times that I haven't voted. I'm not the type of person who says, 'I'm never going to vote.' I think it's clear to me that our system has failed us.

I don't go into any album with pressing issues. I just try to write songs.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Being called 'conscious' is a great thing to be, but it's the connotations and preconceived notions that come with the buying audience about what conscious music can be.

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.

They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for.

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

Woman are complex creatures.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Life is a beautiful struggle..

Everybody could write, deejay, rap. Everybody could do it all.

Music is not an exact science so depending on the time and the mode and the energy when we do it that will determine what happens with it.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

I'm not an artist that has a big, huge radio record that's going to be on BET.

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

When I'm in the studio, I'm strictly thinking about the beats, the rhymes and the song. The decision I make once the songs are created, and there's a barcode put on the package, and I'm out there in the street selling it, those decisions as a businessman are different than the creative decisions you make.

This goes out to freedom fighters, graffiti writers, innocent lifers, grassroots organizers

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.

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.

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