Talib Kweli Quotes
You gotta get back to your essence, Use your gifts and share your presence, Don't count your dollars 'til you count your blessings.
Quotes to Explore
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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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Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that's somewhat correct.
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I don't feel that rap has been respected as an art form. Because people have seen rappers rap off the top of their heads, they don't think it is difficult.
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When you're trying to bring the streets into rap to prove a point, then you already lost. You separate the two, and that ain't to be played with. You've got people that lost their lives and people that are doing real time. If we gon' make music, let's just make music.
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I really wish that I would have gone to college. Even my son, who's into rap himself, I tell him and tell his children, 'Go to college. Get that education - it is so important. Don't do like I did.' I had all this singing on my mind, and I just didn't have time for it.
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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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The problem is that rap is so often a caricature of its own image. Nobody comes to the table with the seriousness of the effect that it can have; nobody is prepared for that.
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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 see things that are inspiring, I must write a song about it. Some people make a t-shirt or slap something on a wall with paint, but I must make music and freestyle rap.
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Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.
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I'm simply a businessman who has seen his share of failures and successes.
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I was told it might be quite difficult to conceive, so it really was a great blessing when my pregnancy suddenly happened. I had been diagnosed years ago with polycystic ovarian syndrome, which can affect your fertility - but luckily, in my case, it didn't.
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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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My iPod will shuffle from rap to pop to rock to classical ... It gets confusing!
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Both should share the same concept of what a relationship means and the same energy to believe in a monogamous relationship.
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What I'm trying to do is put back into rap music what's missing - which is the good part, the fun part, that party part.
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Hip-hop is when you have crowd participation; when you chant at the audience and they chant back at you; when you wave your hands in the air like you just don't care; or some breakdancing. Everything today is just low-beat, real bass-y, bass-y, good rap records.
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The only men I love are dead.
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I used to take someone with me for the chemotherapy so I could do jokes. You always try and find something absurd.
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When you're a young kid, you've burst onto the scene, everyone want sort be your friend, come out with you, and you don't actually realise who wants to be there with you and who wants to be your friend.
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If you gauge how you're doing on whether somebody is responding vocally or not, you're up a creek. You can't do that; you kind of have to be inside of your work and play the scene. And tell the story every day. Tell the story. Tell the story. Regardless of how people are responding, I'm going to tell the story.
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You gotta get back to your essence, Use your gifts and share your presence, Don't count your dollars 'til you count your blessings.
