John Roger Stephens Quotes
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I signed with Kanye back in 2003, and at that time, 'The College Dropout' hadn't even come out, so he was still relatively unknown compared to where he is now. He wasn't a household name; people were still calling him 'Kane.'
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Instead of investing our resources in locking people up, let's invest more of those resources in our fellow citizens so they don't end up in the system to begin with. And if they do, they can get back on their feet.
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I was around a lot of gospel as a kid.
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The prison-industrial complex, poverty, and the school system has more effect on a young black male in America than Jay-Z does, by far. And that's not a diss to Jay-Z. The crime rate in the black community was high before hip hop. Rapping about it is just a reflection of the life a lot of people are living.
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I know how it feels to be a singer who wants to get discovered.
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When I write, I don't really focus on duets or anything like that or whether I'm going to feature this or that rapper. I just focus on just making a great song and figure out the rest later.
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I'm craving more soul, I'm craving more truth, I'm craving more socially - just people that are aware of what's going on in the world.
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In America we have big issues with education - in impoverished communities especially. I work with Teach For All, and so we're encouraging more people to get into teaching.
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I think they need to get a more reliable way of watching television on the laptop. Because I travel so much, if I want to watch my favorite sports team it might not be showing in that place, so I want a reliable way to watch whatever I want to watch on my laptop.
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I was homeschooled for several years.
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Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.
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We have this film that we hope to finance, it's called 'Southern Rights.' It's a documentary about segregated proms that are still happening in the South of America. So there's a black prom and a white prom, so we hope to finance a film soon about that.
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There's nothing that can shock me anymore, but at this point, Trump's made it very clear how his temperament is, how his personality is, what his level of intellectual depth is when it comes to policy, and he's made it abundantly clear that he's utterly unqualified to be president - no matter what your political views are.
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There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life as well as other things, so I'm just like any novelist or any fiction writer who tells stories.
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I was a busy kid in high school - a little bit of an overachiever, I guess. Prom king was kind of silly, but the rest of the stuff was important to me.
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I think writers are prone to hyperbole sometimes.
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Sometimes there's that perfect moment when the crowd, the music, the energy of the room come together in a way that brings me to tears.
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The most I ever spent on technology is building a studio - I built one at home in Los Angeles. I can't tell you how much exactly, but the whole process is very expensive.
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If you look at what happened with Underground Railroad, there is so much action. There is so much intrigue; there is so much of historical importance.
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Being married is not the same as having a kid because being married to another adult who can take care of themselves to a degree is different than having a kid that is completely dependent on you.
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I don't think it's an artist's responsibility to be political all the time. I think your first responsibility as an artist is to make music that people will listen to and enjoy. However, I think that when you are able to say something that is moving and put it in a great song, then that is even better.
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Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.
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I've always had an interest in story-telling and history and just film and art in general, but particularly when it comes to storytelling, I think the reason why we became involved in film is because we wanted to get some great stories out there.
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I like a lot of documentaries, I like political movies and political thrillers. But I also like a good action movie. I like a pretty wide range.