Black Star Quotes
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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.
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The moment you start thinking it's hopeless, then it is. [But], if you think it's gonna get better, it really does. Life is a test.
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You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.
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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.
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So rather than really have, like a close relationship to anything that's coming out today, people are just, they've got it on as background music. It's kind of the same way the cabdrivers use music; it's very disposable. But, that doesn't mean there aren't a great number of artists who are doing things to change that.
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Don't look down, it's an impossible view; Fly like an eagle whatever you do.
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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.
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I feel like people mislead themselves when they tell themselves they're into me because of the lyrics. From my vantage point, people aren't into me because of the content, because of the lyrics. Because there's a million of rappers who have great content.
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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.
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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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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!'
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I just don't think it's very dignified to ask people to like you. You can just wind up being somebody's ottoman.
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I think the biggest problem in our country is mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex. From the Rockefeller drug laws to stand your ground to stop and frisk, all these are pointing people, especially and disproportionately black and brown people, towards the criminal-justice system. It's depleting whole generations of people.
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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.
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Peace before everything, God before anything, Love before anything, real before everything, Home before any place, shoot before anything, Style and state radiate, Love Power slay the hate.
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"Art Imitates life," of course, is that phrase by Oscar Wilde. I called that song "Art Imitates Life" because Oh No was in the studio and he actually came up with that hook. When I was trying to figure out a name for the record, it just kind of made sense.
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Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common senseNext best thing I do a record with common sense
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Why give you the cure when the disease makes money?
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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."
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When I met you it was magic... We polar opposites, but attracted like we was magnets.
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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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I learned [playing Chuck Berry] that there's something to be said for the courage of conviction, that sense of belief, being bold enough to believe in your vision. And there's a quote that really fits his particular energy. It says - they say don't go where the path may lead, but go where there's no path and leave a trail. I think that's exactly what Chuck did, you know. It's an inspiration to a lot of folks, not just musicians, but people everywhere.
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Who you? Your name smaller than fine grains in couscous It's the highest calibre, your calibre is deuce deuce
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I'm trying to get low. People's personalities can get in the way of their own work.