Jay-Z Quotes
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Hip-hop gave a generation a common ground that didn't require either race to lose anything; everyone gained.
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The genius thing that we did was, we didn't give up.
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I'm trying to tell the story in the most clear, concise, and truthful way, taking those everyday words and phrases and capturing them in a way that they become something else.
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They say a midget standing on a giant's shoulders can see much further than the giant. So I got the whole rap world on my shoulders, they trying to see further than I am.
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Put me anywhere on God's green earth, I'll triple my worth. Motherf--. I, will, not, lose.
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People who don't know you, you don't know their motives. They smile at you all day, "Oh, that's great. You've done it again! You're the greatest!" And that's not good for an artist.
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Used to rock a throwback ballin on the corner, now I rock tailored suit lookin' like a owner.
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I get my by any means on, whenever there's a drought get your umbrellas out because that's when I brainstorm.
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Racism is taught in the home. We agree on that? Well, it's very hard to teach racism to a teenager who's listening to rap music and who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg. It's hard to say, 'That guy is less than you.' The kid is like, 'I like that guy, he's cool. How is he less than me?
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That's why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club. People are intermingling, hanging out, having fun, enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It's worldwide. Everywhere you go, people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that.
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Treat my first like my last and the last like my first and my thirst is the same as- when I came.
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Males shouldnt be jealous. Thats a female trait.
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I believe you can speak things into existence.
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For me, being with Obama or having dinner with Bill Clinton... It's crazy. It's mind-blowing, because where I come from is just another world. We were just ignored by politicians, by America in general.
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Life is for living, not living uptight, see ya somewhere up in the sky.
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By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.
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Ex-D-boy, used to park my Beamer Now look at me, I can park in my own arena
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Niggas pray and pray on my downfall, But every time I hit the ground I bounce up like round ball
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Screamin' 'Carpe Diem!' until I'm a Dead Poet.
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I'm gonna fight, and I'm gonna make something out of nothing. That's pretty much the American dream. So, for me, the realization that I could speak to people like that came first on a small scale. Then it just started happening. I started having this vibration.
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A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.
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My life after childhood has two main stories: the story of the hustler and the story of the rapper, and the two overlap as much as they diverge. I was on the streets for more than half of my life from the time I was thirteen years old. People sometimes say that now I'm so far away from that life - now that I've got businesses and Grammys and magazine covers - that I have no right to rap about it. But how distant is the story of your own life ever going to be? The feelings I had during that part of my life were burned into me like a brand. It was life during wartime.
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I couldn't even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn't let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn't stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping sane.
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[T]he truth is that drug addicts have a disease. It only takes a short time in the streets to realize that out-of-control addiction is a medical problem, not a form of recreational or criminal behavior. And the more society treats drug addiction as a crime, the more money drug dealers will make "relieving" the suffering of the addicts.