Black Star Quotes
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It's difficult to really be an artist nowadays. People are just on another page. You have a society that needs you to say something, but they don't want to give you the environment to be able to be just a functioning, happy, normal person. It's like, the industry is at odds with you, the society is at odds with you. You start to live in this very confined box where it's like, It's "me" and "them."
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In the early '90s, when I really started to find my voice, I was reading a lot of books, and I was moved by the writers, like Chinua Achebe, and I wanted to be able to write rhymes that were as potent as what I was reading.
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The test in life nowadays is just trying to keep yourself charged up with enough good feeling. It's like, "OK what am I going to do to feel really good today?" Not like, some chick or a drink.
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There was a time when hip-hop was its own musical principle, aside from sampling. Like the entire Wild Style break is instrumental. Kurtis Blow's earliest stuff was studio musicians playing. Whodini had a real clear sound, things like "five minutes of funk," stuff that you could write really beautiful, lush string and horn arrangements around, stuff that was just music.
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I can't take it y'all I can feel the city breathin Chest heavin, against the flesh of the evening Sigh before we die like the last train leaving
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Crunk Feminist Collective, I think, is a noble endeavor, and any group of young women coming together to uplift women, especially being run by women of color, I have no choice but to support that. But they're dead wrong on me.
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I'm not an artist that has a big, huge radio record that's going to be on BET. I'm not, at this point, gunning for like, "Oh, I'm gonna kill them in the first week." But as people slowly discover the album they realize it's better than a lot of what they've been listening to all year.
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Don't look down, it's an impossible view; Fly like an eagle whatever you do.
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You can positively affect and change a social circumstance with art, and it’s vital that a change happens now.
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Record companies are not necessarily interested in you realizing your artistic dream. The bottom line is that they got to sell records.
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I gotta be dope first. I gotta be appealing to your senses, and to what you like first. Then the message happens. Then you relate to the message.
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I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time. The people who are in charge of what people see or hear are afraid. What you hear on top 40 or what you see on BET or MTV is not a fair representation of what is really going on...
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Michael Jordan on the court is a completely different guy. If the play requires him to leap out all the way and grab the ball, that's what he'll do. He may be a completely shy, withdrawn sort of person [off the court].
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You see somebody rapping and you're like, "Nah, my cousin can do that." You're spoiled by the experience. Overseas, it's still something that people can appreciate.
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If lyrics sold then truth be told/I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z.
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It’s very seductive to focus on what you don’t like as opposed to celebrating all that it is that you do.
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Or is it the mind state that's ill, creating crime rates to fill the new prisons the build
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Restlessness is my nemesis. It's hard to just chill and sit still.
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The founder of Crunk Feminists is a Christian. If you claim to be a Christian, but then you attack somebody for saying you should approach a problem with love, you're not being a true Christian.
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With Prisoner of Conscience, the focus was - I've worked with Madlib, High Tech, Kanye West, J Dilla. I feel like I've worked with some of the greatest of all time. That's been overlooked. That's been overshadowed by the weight of the lyrics.
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The way I feel about Crunk Feminists. Here you have a bunch of bloggers who are not even quoting any feminists' works who are telling me what I can do better when I've been doing this as my life's work while y'all still in college! What are you talking about? And their criticism was of the idea that we should approach people like Rick Ross and Lil' Wayne with love when they have lyrics that we don't like, as opposed to approaching them with hate. That's their issue: How dare I say I approach Rick Ross with love!
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Focused. I'm a hustler. And my hustle is trying to figure out the best ways to do what I like without having to do much else.
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When you shine bright, some won't enjoy the shadow you cast.
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God gave us music, so we play with our words.