Top 177 Quotes & Sayings by Talib Kweli - Page 3

I have enough rhythm to blend at this point. I have enough rhythm to blend one song into another. But man, I have such respect for the art of deejaying. I hesitate to even call myself a deejay.

God gave us music, so we play with our words.

Harry Belafonte hit me to the Dream Defenders and I liked what they were about. When I asked them how I could help their movement, they said, "You can help by coming down here; you can tweet."

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.

Michael Bloomberg is a sensible guy. He's just privileged. He's a goddamn billionaire, and he or his family members have never had to deal with anything as remotely degrading as stop and frisk. So he has no point of reference.

People didn't really take white rappers seriously until Eminem, because he was better than everybody. Like female emcees, you need to be like Lauryn Hill or Nicki Minaj or killing everything before somebody takes you seriously.

As an artist, I have to be a leader of my fans, not like follow them. Because if I chose to follow them, you know, they could do it.

I feel like your city - with hip hop in particular, because we're always beating our chest and shouting where we're from - your city is just as influential as your parents. Even the grimy, hardcore gangster rap from New York - KRS-One and Wu Tang, the stuff acknowledges it.

I feel like I have way more resources, way more experience. I'm better. But my fans romanticize the earlier stuff, and I don't think it's just like a nostalgia thing of "He's not as good" - I think it's because that earlier stuff was aggressively marketed as a lifestyle to them.

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.

I listened to a mind joint, and I wanted to do my own version of it, and what you hear on my mixtape is my take on what the whole CD sounds like.

I look at the deejay thing as something - I'm good at it because I have my own music. I have enough rhythm to blend at this point.

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.

My rhymes are like shot clocks, interstate cops and blood clots, my point is your flow gets stopped.

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.

I'm spinning records and I look across the restaurant and I see somebody who looks Asian. And I'm like, "Yo, that looks like Yoko Ono." I'm like, oh, I can just meet - that's going to be great. Then I look carefully and I'm like, "That's not Yoko Ono, that's Bruno Mars." And it was Bruno Mars. That just happened recently. I was bugging out. Because that was totally not Yoko Ono at all.

I have a luxury of people coming to see me whether I play for the crowd or not. I don't take that lightly.

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.

To be honest, that whole exchange with Crunk Feminist actually made me write the song because I realize there's a lot of young women out there so hurt by the misogynistic images in hip-hop they paint it with such a broad brush stroke that they think anybody that defends hip-hop is defending misogyny.

The thing is, allies is people who are friends, people you can rely on in the struggle. You're not always going to agree with your allies. For instance, Stevie Wonder I feel like is my ally when it comes to this Florida situation, but I don't agree with his strategy. That doesn't mean he isn't an ally.

Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common senseNext best thing I do a record with common sense

Now people won't beat you up if you are gay; they might just talk behind your back.

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.

When you have a voice and a platform and you know better, it becomes your moral obligation to support that community. And by extension, you're supporting your family.

Who you? Your name smaller than fine grains in couscous It's the highest calibre, your calibre is deuce deuce

I was kind of just too lazy to take my money out of the bank until I saw how Citi Bank responded to Occupy Wall Street.

I'd like to work with Outkast, I'd like to work with RZA, I'd like to work with Timbaland, York, a whole bunch of people.

By the time you get into other kinds of music - R&B, country, or whatever - it becomes something that's romantic. It becomes something unattainable. Never-ending undying love. And in hip hop, we're still taking direct inspiration.

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.

They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for.

We speak the love language, they speak from pain and anguish. Some don't love theyselves, so they perception is tainted.

Why give you the cure when the disease makes money?

Just because someone has great content doesn't mean you like them as a rapper.

But Rawkus is integral to what I do, because the cats who started Rawkus are the first ones who really saw my vision, and gave me a platform to get it out there, so I'm definitely totally grateful for that.

I think people are into me because of my music choices and my musicality.

I was always rhyming and doing it for the love before I found out I was gonna have children and when I found out, doing it for the love wasn't enough.

If you go to a college campus and you do stop and frisk, you're going to find a lot of drugs there too.

Fortunately, artists can live off their works, if you're creative at how you do it. If you just depend on the videos and the radio, you're at a loss.

These niggaz ain't thugs, the real thugs is the government. Don't matter if you Independent, Democrat or Republican, Niggaz politickin' the street, get into beef, Start blastin'...now a new cat is executive chief.

Music is not an exact science so depending on the time and the mode and the energy when we do it that will determine what happens with it.

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.

I don’t think that early hip hop stood out to be a social critique. A lot of fans of mine think that hip hop’s ultimate responsibility is to critique social structures.

Love is blind, you just see bright light

Unfortunately hip-hop is so competitive that in order for fringe groups to get in, you gotta be better than whoever's the best. So before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible.

Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn't go the way of jazz.

Or is it the mind state that's ill, creating crime rates to fill the new prisons the build

"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.

Hip hop is at its essence a folk music, because it speaks the language that people are still speaking at ground zero, it speaks the language that people speak on the streets.

I support the idea that artists have to make a stand. I'm with that - you're putting the discussion on the table and you're letting people know. You're being brave as an artist and responsible to the community.

But there's so many things in life like women, like children, like God and family that transcends the world of hip-hop.

Everybody could write, deejay, rap. Everybody could do it all.

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.

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.

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.

Hip hop has always been, for us, for artists who are pure to the craft - any place overseas, whether it's Australia, any place in Asia, Germany, Africa, it becomes something where you can still go and work. Hip hop is an import culture. We're spoiled by it here. It's homegrown.

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.

Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools.