Jay-Z Quotes
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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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Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama's running so we all can fly.
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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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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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I really just like breaking down the barriers, whether it means doing an album with Linkin Park, an album with R. Kelly, or playing at the Brandenburg Gate with Bono.
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The day Obama got elected, the gangsta became less relevant.
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What people do in their own homes is their business, and you can choose to love whoever you love. That's their business. It's no different than discriminating against blacks. It's discrimination, plain and simple.
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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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I got mouths to feed til they put flowers on me.
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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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People really feel like music is free, but will pay $6 for water. You can drink water free out of the tap and it's good water. But they're okay paying for it. It's just the mindset right now.
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Electing a black man named Barack Obama President in the same country that elected George W. Bush - twice! - is as far-fetched as a hustler from Marcy performing at that President's inauguration. But it happened.
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When I come back like Jordan, wearing the 4-5. It ain't to play games with you, it's to aim at you, probably maim you. If I owe you I'm blowin' you to smithereens.
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As kids we didn't complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could. And as soon as we had a little money, we were eager to show it.
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Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music.
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Only God can judge me so I'm gone, either love me or leave me alone.
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Little brothers ring fingers get cut up to show mothers they really got em.
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When you step outside of school and have to teach yourself about life, you develop a different relationship to information. I've never been a purely linear thinker. You can see it in my rhymes. My mind is always jumping around, restless, making connections, mixing and matching ideas, rather than marching in a straight line. That's why I'm always stressing focus. My thoughts chase each other from room to room in my head if I let them, so sometimes I have to slow myself down.
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When you're growing up, your dad is your superhero. Once you've let yourself fall that in love with someone, once you put him on such a high pedestal and he lets you down, you never want to experience that pain again.
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I'm not concerned with noise because I'm playing the long game.
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It's hilarious a lot of times. You have a conversation with someone, and he's like, 'You speak so well!' I'm like, 'What do you mean? Do you understand that's an insult?
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I'm far from being god, but I work god damn hard.
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Well I'm not just gon' go and do rap songs. I wanna touch, and maybe help, and see what I can do in these areas.' As I start looking around me, looking at things in ways that I can become helpful, starting at the first thing, water. Something as simple as water.
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Hip-hop is a perfect mix between poetry and boxing.