Top 100 Talib Kweli Quotes
#1. So I think hip-hop is moving and is going to continue to move in the direction of rappers just being honest with themselves, whether you're talking about Common and Mos Def or Nas and 50 cent.
Talib Kweli
#2. The most important time in history is - NOW - the present,
So count your blessings cause time can't define the essence.
Talib Kweli
#3. I don't feel comfortable making empty music.
Talib Kweli
#4. A lot of these people, these program directors, just like anybody else in the world, even though they're supposed to be leaders in the world, they're followers. They follow what they think someone else is doing, instead of trying to blaze a trail.
Talib Kweli
#5. 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.
Talib Kweli
#6. Hi-Tek is on three or four songs on the new record.
Talib Kweli
#7. 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
#8. You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Talib Kweli
#9. Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools.
Talib Kweli
#10. I think people are into me because of my music choices and my musicality.
Talib Kweli
#11. What's more condescending and corny than someone telling you how much more money they have than you and telling you basically, 'I don't care about poor people,' which is a large part of what you hear of corporate hip-hop on the radio.
Talib Kweli
#12. Nowadays rap artists coming half-hearted,
Commercial like pop, or underground like black markets.
Where were you the day hip-hop died?
Is it too early to mourn? Is it too late to ride?
Talib Kweli
#13. My fans like to be romantic. I feel like I'm creating at least at the same level or even a higher level of creativity than I was at twenty-one. I've gotten better as an artist.
Talib Kweli
#14. 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.
Talib Kweli
#15. So I just had to step up how I was doing it and the moment that I stepped up and the moment I focused all my energy on that is when things started to happen. So there's a direct relationship between my inspiration and my output.
Talib Kweli
#16. 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.
Talib Kweli
#17. 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
#18. My kids are the most inspiring thing that pushes me. It used to be because they were born, and I had to take care of them. Now it's because my son raps, and he's better than me. So now I gotta keep up with him, you know what I'm saying?
Talib Kweli
#19. When I met you it was magic ...
We polar opposites, but attracted like we was magnets.
Talib Kweli
#20. I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.
Talib Kweli
#21. 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.
Talib Kweli
#22. Things are fluid in this world, and if you don't remain fluid, you get lost in the sauce.
Talib Kweli
#23. A true artist does not depend on radio for success. A true fan does not let radio determine what they support
Talib Kweli
#24. And you know, art as commerce, doesn't really make too much sense, they don't go together.
Talib Kweli
#25. The responsibility of an artist is to be honest with themselves.
Talib Kweli
#26. Who you? Your name smaller than fine grains in couscous
It's the highest calibre, your calibre is deuce deuce
Talib Kweli
#27. 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. You know, it's me who's doing it.
Talib Kweli
#28. My personal take on politics is I deal with social situations and cultural situations in my music and in my life. I have said on record many times that I haven't voted. I'm not the type of person who says, 'I'm never going to vote.' I think it's clear to me that our system has failed us.
Talib Kweli
#29. Love is blind, you just see bright light
Talib Kweli
#30. We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.
Talib Kweli
#31. If I'm performing with a DJ, it's all on me to draw the energy. I like the camaraderie of a band.
Talib Kweli
#32. Homosexuality in hip-hop is an extension of homosexuality in the black community. The black community is very, very conservative when it comes to homosexuality, and I don't mean conservative in the good way, like we're saving money. I mean very intolerant.
Talib Kweli
#33. The only way for me to be an artist is to be honest in my craft. If I veer from that, I'm not giving the investors what they want. Sometimes it's my job as an artist to know what I want to do, even when the fans tell me different.
Talib Kweli
#34. If you go to a college campus and you do stop and frisk, you're going to find a lot of drugs there too.
Talib Kweli
#35. I think its man's nature to go to war and fight.
Talib Kweli
#36. 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
#37. I met Mos Def around that time but I didn't hook up with him until I was about 17 or 18.
Talib Kweli
#38. That's what hip-hop is: It's sociology and English put to a beat, you know.
Talib Kweli
#39. 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.
Talib Kweli
#40. You gotta get back to your essence,
Use your gifts and share your presence,
Don't count your dollars 'til you count your blessings.
Talib Kweli
#41. 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.
Talib Kweli
#42. When I look at the arc of my career, my focus is on lyricism, right? I own that.
Talib Kweli
#43. Please, this is no disrespect to whoever your man is though. This relationship is strictly musical like D'Angelo
Talib Kweli
#44. I tour whether I have album out or not. I tour more than any other hip-hop artist.
Talib Kweli
#45. 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.
Talib Kweli
#46. But you have to be creative on how you sell yourself and market yourself.
Talib Kweli
#47. Young kids should be doing music that has shock value. They'll grow out of it.
Talib Kweli
#48. "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.
Talib Kweli
#49. I'm not an artist that has a big, huge radio record that's going to be on BET.
Talib Kweli
#50. Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn't go the way of jazz.
Talib Kweli
#51. Being called a conscious rapper is quite a compliment. It's a great thing to be. But as an artist, my nature is to not be in a box.
Talib Kweli
#52. The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.
Talib Kweli
#53. 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.
Talib Kweli
#54. 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.
Talib Kweli
#55. There's consciousness in my music, and my music comes from a conscious place. And when people say that, I certainly take it as a compliment. But my job, in terms of selling my music, is to be universal and to try to get it to everybody.
Talib Kweli
#56. 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.
Talib Kweli
#57. Honestly, you have to take care of yourself. That's probably something I have learned on the road.
Talib Kweli
#58. 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.
Talib Kweli
#59. I think hip hop is a dance music that's rebellious by nature.
Talib Kweli
#60. 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.
Talib Kweli
#61. I think that I am seeing the Internet and seeing technology take and seeing how the work I do through music directly affects people's lives better than any politician I've ever met.
Talib Kweli
#62. When Occupy Wall Street happened, I took my money out of Citibank. I already had problems with all the banks - Citibank, Bank of America - but I was kind of just too lazy to take my money out until I saw how Citibank responded to Occupy Wall Street.
Talib Kweli
#63. It doesn't get any more underground, conscious or indie than Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, but because they got a couple of really big pop hits, actually some of the biggest pop hits that hip-hop has ever seen, people are missing that part of their story. People are not counting that blessing.
Talib Kweli
#64. I don't care if Rick Ross is 40 years old
he's a misguided 40-year-old person.
Talib Kweli
#65. God gave us music, so we play with our words.
Talib Kweli
#66. Consider me the entity within the industry without a history of spitting the epitome of stupidity.
Talib Kweli
#67. People consider Black Star a great album, and I think it's a classic album. But the fact is, both me and Mos Def have made better albums since Black Star.
Talib Kweli
#68. I don't go into any album with pressing issues. I just try to write songs.
Talib Kweli
#69. 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
#70. My rhymes are like shot clocks,
interstate cops
and blood clots,
my point is your flow gets stopped.
Talib Kweli
#71. The problem with our role is Americans live in a world of illusion.
Talib Kweli
#72. You know, there's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle.
Talib Kweli
#73. I not only wanted to showcase lyrical skills but also continue to drop knowledge on the hiphop community. I'm looking to elevate through my music, and through my music I educate.
Talib Kweli
#74. I think all those artists are artists who are appreciated because you believe their words and you appreciate their honesty in their music. If you don't appreciate the honesty in the music, the beat can be fly as hell but you'll never give an emcee props.
Talib Kweli
#75. Life without knowledge is death in disguise ...
Talib Kweli
#76. I am not a prisoner of conscious, but people try to make me one sometimes. It is both a gift and a curse. It's a high honour but can create limitations - I have to be fluid.
Talib Kweli
#78. They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for.
Talib Kweli
#79. 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.
Talib Kweli
#80. Why give you the cure when the disease makes money?
Talib Kweli
#82. 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.
Talib Kweli
#83. Just because no one can understand how you speak,
Don't necessarily mean that what you be sayin is deep.
Talib Kweli
#84. You have to learn how to harness technology so you can use it for positive stuff without being disconnected from nature.
Talib Kweli
#85. I remember looking back on a photo of me ... wearing a suit that was, like, two sizes too big for me. I think a lot of guys don't know what fits.
Talib Kweli
#86. 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.
Talib Kweli
#87. I think hip-hop is no more misogynistic than America is as a society. I just think hip-hop is a lot more brash, a lot more bold, a lot more loquacious. There are a lot more words that go into a hip-hop song than go into a regular song.
Talib Kweli
#88. Before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible.
Talib Kweli
#89. There are staples to my show. I have to be conscious about switching things up because I know people who saw me last year will say, 'He did that last time.' But if certain things work, they work.
Talib Kweli
#90. People can be inspired the way I've been inspired by music.
Talib Kweli
#91. Even an independent label is looking for a hit, they're not looking for a record that's not gonna do well.
Talib Kweli
#92. If lyrics sold then truth be told/I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z.
Talib Kweli
#93. 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.
Talib Kweli
#94. The materialism, the brashness, the misogyny - everything in hip-hop is amplified. Misogyny is a good example of something that is completely amplified in hip-hop. I do think there is more than enough of a balance, though, for fans who are willing to search it out.
Talib Kweli
#95. My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl.
Talib Kweli
#96. The way I see it, if people truly love my music, they will support me in some way down the road.
Talib Kweli
#97. Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.
Talib Kweli
#98. There just needs to be a gay rapper. He doesn't have to be flamboyant, just a rapper who identifies as gay - who's better than everybody. Unfortunately hip-hop is so competitive that in order for fringe groups to get in, you gotta be better than whoever's the best.
Talib Kweli
#99. Just because someone has great content doesn't mean you like them as a rapper.
Talib Kweli
#100. We get high on all types of drugs when, all you really need is Love
Talib Kweli
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