Vilifies Def Quotes

I think that Mos Def is the best actor, but when you talk about rappers in films, I don't really think the quality of the acting is most important because most rappers are put in movies because of the personality and people want to see that. ~ Morris Chestnut

Hip-hop is rock & roll. What the hell is Wu-Tang but Motorhead? ~ Mos Def

Ronald Reagan said, 'Trust, but verify.' President Obama is 'trust, but vilify.' He trusts our enemies and vilifies everyone who disagrees with him. ~ Mike Huckabee

I have always been involved with radio, whether it was as an artist talking to radio about my own songs, or as a promotion man at Def Jam to working records through my company. In 2000 I was asked to host a show in Norfolk VA and through that show I was then asked to host the morning show in Detroit. The concept of the show was around Hip Hop. We were active in the community and we wanted to do a local show that had a hip hop feel around it. ~ MC Serch

Restlessness is my nemesis/ It's hard to just chill and sit still ~ Mos Def

There was a time when hip-hop was its own musical principle, aside from sampling. Like the entire Wild Style break is instrumental. Kurtis Blow's earliest stuff was studio musicians playing. Whodini had a real clear sound, things like "five minutes of funk," stuff that you could write really beautiful, lush string and horn arrangements around, stuff that was just music. ~ Mos Def

Recall Part 3c's mention of how Cantor took what had been regarded as a paradoxical, totally unhandlable feature of (Infinity)-namely that an infinite set/class/aggregate can be put into a one-to-one correspondence with its own subset-and transformed it into the technical def. of infinite set. Watch how he does the same thing here, turning what appear to be devastating objections into rigorous criteria, by defining a set S as any aggregate of collection of discrete entities that satisfies two conditions: (1) S can be entertained by the mind as an aggregate, and (2) There is some stated rule or condition via which one can determine, for any entity x, whether or not x is a member of S. ~ David Foster Wallace

Hip-Hop went from selling crack to smoking it ~ Mos Def

I believe the projects were a social experiment; we were laboratory rats stacked on top of each other, and people just knew, inherently, that there was something wrong. There's not a lot of regard for the property by the residents. ~ Mos Def

Aging on camera is just very hard. I love my age. I feel good about myself but high definition television is not kind. You don't even look like yourself in high-def. It just makes every little line on your face more exaggerated so it ends up aging you. It's like you're watching yourself seven years older. ~ Lisa Edelstein

I can't take it y'all
I can feel the city breathin
Chest heavin, against the flesh of the evening
Sigh before we die like the last train leaving ~ Mos Def

Good art provides people with a vocabulary about things they can't articulate. ~ Mos Def

It started off really ... claustrophobic. I feel like I was really really protected. Really guarded with myself. I feel like they [Def Jam] were giving me the blueprint and I couldn't get with that ~ Rihanna

It's difficult to really be an artist nowadays. People are just on another page. You have a society that needs you to say something, but they don't want to give you the environment to be able to be just a functioning, happy, normal person. It's like, the industry is at odds with you, the society is at odds with you. You start to live in this very confined box where it's like, It's "me" and "them." ~ Mos Def

You want to know how to rhyme, then learn how to add. It's mathematics. ~ Mos Def

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

I stretched my arms towards the sky like blades of tall grass
The sun beat between my shoulders like carnival drums
I sat still in hopes that it would help my wings grow
So then I could really be fly
And then she arrived
Like day break inside a railway tunnel
Like the new moon, like a diamond in the mines
Like high noon to a drunkard, sudden
She made my heart beat in a now-now time signature
Her skinny canvas for ultraviolet brushstrokes
She was the sun's painting
She was a deep cognac color
Her eyes sparkled like lights along the new city
She lips pursed as if her breath was too sweet
And full for her mouth to hold
I said, "You are the beautiful, the stress of mathematics."
I said, "For you, I would peel open the clouds like new fruit
And give you lightning and thunder as a dowry
I would make the sky shed all of it's stars, light and rain
And I would clasp the constellations across your waist
And I would make the heavens your cape
And they would be pleased to cover you
They would be pleased to cover you
May I please, cover you, please ~ Mos Def

I'm blacked than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle ~ Mos Def

Guy: What has nine arms and sucks?
Me: What?
Guy: Def Leppard. ~ Jason Myers

Why did one straw break the camel's back?
Here's the secret:
The million other straws underneath it. ~ Mos Def

In the early '90s, when I really started to find my voice, I was reading a lot of books, and I was moved by the writers, like Chinua Achebe, and I wanted to be able to write rhymes that were as potent as what I was reading. ~ Mos Def

Hip-hop is a beautiful culture. It's inspirational, because it's a culture of survivors. You can create beauty out of nothingness. ~ Mos Def

AC/DC, Def Leppard, Alice Cooper - I learned stories of all these guys. That's when I fell in love with Queen, which is one of my favorite bands of all time ... I started paying attention to what made music good. I started paying attention to why I liked it. ~ Rico Love

Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape now let it fall - HUNGH ~ Mos Def

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. ~ Talib Kweli

I just didn't wanna put the pressure on myself to be in there [Def Jam South] to work as an artist and to have the hat as the executive with other projects. ~ DJ Khaled

I feel like I was the only person who was capable of making this type of music in this type of way. I don't rap like nobody, I don't try to sound like nobody. ~ Mos Def

I got my first exposure to Islam when I was 13. ~ Mos Def

They say that when a man faces his destiny, the destiny ends and he becomes the man that he really is. ~ Mos Def

And remember don't high post when you're far from home, and high posting when you're all alone. ~ Mos Def

Life is a great big beautiful three-ring circus. There are those on the floor making their lives among the heads of lions and hoops of fire, and those in the stands, complacent and wowed, their mouths stuffed with popcorn.

I know less now than ever about life, but I do know its size. Life is enormous. Much grander than what we've taken for ourselves, so far.

When the show is over and the tent is packed, the elephants, lions and dancing poodles are caged and mounted on trucks to caravan to the next town. The clown's makeup has worn, and his bright, red smile has been washed down a sink. All that is left is another performance, another tent and set of lights. We rest in the knowledge: the show must go on.

Somewhere, behind our stage curtain, a still, small voice asks why we haven't yet taken up juggling. My seminars were like this. Only, instead of flipping shiny, black bowling balls or roaring chainsaws through the air, I juggled concepts.

The world is intrinsically tied together. All things march through time at different intervals but move ahead in one fashion or another.

Though we may never understand it, we are all part of something much larger than ourselves - something anchoring us to the spot we have mentally chosen. We sniff out the rules, through spiritual quests and the sciences. And with every new discovery, we grow more confused.

Our inability to connect what seems illogical to unite and to def ~ Christopher Hawke

Breathe in ... inhale vapors from bright stars that shine,
Breathe out ... weed smoke retrace the skyline. ~ Mos Def

I'm a little different from the average dude because I'm on high-def TV now. ~ Ray Romano

Man, I smashed her like an Idaho Potato ~ Mos Def

I don't wanna get into that space where a lot of guys now, their solo album is like eight or 10 songs with other people, you don't get an idea of who this guy is. I just wasn't interested in that. ~ Mos Def

Hard rock for me is AC/DC, Def Leppard, Tesla, Kiss. Metal tends to be louder, ruder, darker, like Judas Priest, Slayer, Iron Maiden. ~ Eddie Trunk

Your way of life is sinful and wrong, he said fiercely.
Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares, though they are the backbone of your church, and seeks to control his worshippers through guilt and fear. ~ P.C. Cast

When people say, 'I don't see you enough,' well just because you don't see me don't mean I don't exist, or just 'cause you haven't heard me don't mean I haven't been making noise. But if I keep making noise, you'll pick up. ~ Mos Def