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Crack mothers, crack babies and AIDS patients Youngbloods can't spell, but they could rock you in PlayStation.
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
Who you? Your name smaller than fine grains in couscous It's the highest calibre, your calibre is deuce deuce
Talib Kweli Black Star
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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."
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
Let me finish my music, and let me present it the way I want to present it. And then share it, put it online, do whatever you want to do after that.
Talib Kweli Black Star -
I look at the deejay thing as a tier thing. If I'm not going to compete on that level, I'm just going to do it as a hobby.
Talib Kweli Black Star -
I feel like being into the beat of your own drum has become too prominent in the culture.
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product, not a person, so I've been going by Yasiin since '99. At first it was just for friends and family, but now I'm declaring it openly.
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
I tell people all the time, I've always loved music and I love the language, which is a huge reason why I'm part of theater. But, I didn't wanna do all of this. I would've been satisfied to do it, like, on the weekends among friends, and to have a regular job.
Yasiin Bey Black Star
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Restlessness is my nemesis. It's hard to just chill and sit still.
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
Hip-hop is the last true folk art.
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
You can positively affect and change a social circumstance with art, and it’s vital that a change happens now.
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
No one likes to be treated like people in minority communities. What it's saying is that because you're poor, because you live in a neighborhood that deals with oppressed conditions, you deserve to be treated like a criminal. In our Constitution it says you have the right to live without illegal search and seizure.
Talib Kweli Black Star -
As far as my New York influence, one thing I'm proud of in my career is, I rep Brooklyn, New York all day. But people don't look at my music as New York music. People consider my music underground music.
Talib Kweli Black Star -
I'm really quite bipolar, and the depressed times, when everything felt like night, sometimes you get to such a low point that you physically beat at it until it bleeds - as you would say - bleeds till sunshine. You get to a point where you say, 'I will not take it anymore! I'm gonna do something drastic if I stay this depressed. I've got to break out of there!'
Yasiin Bey Black Star
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I have a luxury of people coming to see me whether I play for the crowd or not. I don't take that lightly.
Talib Kweli Black Star -
You have to be an extremist to believe that you're gonna be the president of the United States and your name is Barack Hussein Obama! And he's using extreme methods, but his application is very smooth. Michelle Obama is extreme, her presence is extreme. And it's an extreme good. Extreme is not negative.
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
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
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
To me, the job of the artist is to provide a useful and intelligent vocabulary for the world to be able to articulate feelings they experience everyday, and otherwise wouldn't have the means to express in a meaningful and useful way.
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
My parents are my biggest influences. My parents and my city. Brooklyn, New York, New York City, the community I grew up. I don't feel like I'm special in that. I feel like that's everybody.
Talib Kweli Black Star -
If it's just fame for the sake of being famous, no one even cares about you - and you don't even care about yourself because you're like, "This is so ridiculous."
Yasiin Bey Black Star
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But there's so many things in life like women, like children, like God and family that transcends the world of hip-hop.
Talib Kweli Black Star -
To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.
Yasiin Bey Black Star -
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.
Talib Kweli Black Star -
I'm an independent thinker. And I'm not the poster child for any movement. I'm trying to support whatever's right no matter where it is.
Yasiin Bey Black Star