Black Star Quotes
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This thing called rhymin' is no different than coal minin'; We both on assignment to unearth the diamond.
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Restlessness is my nemesis. It's hard to just chill and sit still.
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Fame is like getting across the street. It's like, if there's nothing to be across the street for, it's a pointless destination. It's like, "I gotta get across the street, man! I gotta be there! I gotta be there!" Then you get across the street and you're like, "Yeah I'm here!" And then, that's it. Fame doesn't make you particularly happy.
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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'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.
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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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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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Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn't go the way of jazz.
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There just needs to be a gay rapper who's better than everybody. That's when that question will no longer be able to be asked.
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Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common senseNext best thing I do a record with common sense
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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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"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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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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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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When people say I don't see you enough, well just because you don't see me don't mean I don't exist or just 'cause you haven't heard me don't mean I haven't been making noise. But if I keep making noise, you'll pick up.
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I like the fact that I can rep New York, but my style does not - I'm not trapped in a New York thing. I can do art songs with other artists and it's seamless.
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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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I've always loved rhyming. I love language.
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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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Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s.
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That idea of peace and love toward humanity shouldn't be nationalistic or denominational. It should be a chief concern for all mankind.
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I try to count the blessings rather than the problems.
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Don't look down, it's an impossible view; Fly like an eagle whatever you do.