A Quote by Jay-Z

Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way. — © Jay-Z
Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way.
I think that the world of making movies and how movies get made has certainly changed and evolved over the years. So we're just trying to keep up with it and keep telling our stories in whatever way we can, by hook or by crook.
I choose not to be in front of the camera. Sometimes I do get offered parts, but I really like just making movies and telling stories.
I had written rap songs in the early '90s and even did a couple homemade rap songs with my brother in like '88 or '89, but it was just like... I don't even know how to say it. Just plain rap. I was just rapping about whatever, there was no real style or direction, it was just semi-braggadocious rhymes that probably imitated 100 other rappers.
I like human stories. I like stories about situations we can relate to. I like movies like 'Ordinary People' or 'Terms of Endearment.' Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, boyfriends, girlfriends. The stories to me that are worth telling are almost simple ones, but very relatable.
I really like telling stories. When I was a kid, I wanted to write songs. In quite a fundamental, gratifying, childish way, I enjoy the doing of telling a story.
We didn't go to any summer camps because we just wanted to be making movies and telling stories.
I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling.
The paradox is that, by children taking shortcuts through computer games, through fantasies, through movies that load on all the emotional stimulation of encountering life in a stylized way - all of this is the equivalent of mainlining of paleolithic emotions, emotions about combat, about personal success, about overcoming monsters, about making powerful friendships, about winning wars and entering new territory.
I feel like when it comes to rap - like, real rap music - and knowing the pioneers of rap, I feel like there's no competition for me in the NBA. Other guys can rap, but they're not as invested or as deep into actual music as I am and always have been. I think that might be what the difference is. I'm more wanting to be an artist.
I like to do movies, because I love becoming different characters, and telling different stories through different eyes, and affecting someone's life in one way or another.
I've been making movies for a long time. The Japanese way of making movies has become second nature to me. To get away from that, I really try to surround myself with younger staff and approach making movies not like a veteran of the industry but always as a beginner and a rookie.
My songs examine and explore little specific emotions or situations or stories... They're kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and one other person. It's almost like an alien has been sent to get emotional samples from human beings and put it all together on a record.
I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it's a better way of telling the stories.
Pretty early on in making the first movie I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I felt like by that time I just found my niche, like this is what I was supposed to be doing. So I completely submerged myself into the world of watching movies, making my own movies, buying video cameras and lights. When I wasn't making a movie, I was making my own movies. When I wasn't making movies, I was watching movies. I was going back and studying film and looking back at guys that were perceived as great guys that I can identify with. It just became my life.
To make movies you just have to want it enough. You have to have the passion for telling stories. You have to get by the love-of-movies aspect. You can't just be a movie fan.
There's no controversy in my way. There's nobody telling me to rap like this or anything.
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