Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I have to be able to rap. I don't have the look. I don't have the typical slim-dude, fancy-clothes look. That's not me. I have to be able to rap - there is no other choice, or else I get eaten alive.
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Back in the day, when the D.J. would be playing a record, I'd be on the mic trying to hype up the crowd. So once Public Enemy became a rap group, I decided that that's the role that I wanted to take on. I wanted to be the one that was hyping, because I've always been good at it. I can hype up any crowd.
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I think rap music is brought up, gangster rap in particular, as well as video games, every other thing they try to hang the ills of society on as a scapegoat.
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I pay attention to lyrics and I know what rap fans care about. I try to write for the average listener and I'm conscious of the mainstream without selling out.
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They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus, that means guns, sex, lies, video tapes, but if I talk about God my record won't get played Huh?
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I would love to do Broadway again.
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Our music attracts the people that we rap about and make music about, and they come out and actually do it.
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Not that I want to put the entire rap music style down - I just don't like it. And I know somewhere there's gotta be another guy like that. There's gotta be a guy just like that - just like me. There's gotta be somebody, somewhere... Maybe, maybe an assassin type.
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When I first got into the rap game, I had an early dream of unifying rappers.
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It is a coincidence that Mathangi is the Goddess of Music and the spoken word, which can be rap.
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I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music.
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I don't even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.
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I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever.
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If I was on Broadway, I would want to do anything Vaudeville or a biopic.
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The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.
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My character is meant to know nothing about rap, and not to like it very much, but I know about it, because my kids make me listen to it. There's some rap I do like very much. I like Eminem, Blackalicious.
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I never liked socially conscious rap. I like rap that's physical, that's about a beat and bass and repetition.
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I don't rap to get the women, fuck bitches. Give me a fat slut that cooks and does dishes.
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To be honest, producing records interests me less at the moment and I really don't want to get involved in album projects that are going to take up a lot of time.
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With a stage play, they can't cut a word; you can be in rehearsals every day, you cast it, you cast the director, too; the amount of control for a playwright is almost infinite, so you have that control over the finished product.
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I think about nothing but business the whole time. Even when I go out to my after-parties, people are like, 'You're drinking water?' I'm like, 'Yeah I am.'
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If you accept your limitations you go beyond them.
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Your self-image controls your performance; see yourself as confident and in complete control
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I'm blacked than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle
