Kweli Quotes

#1. If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be
Lyrically, Talib Kweli
Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like Common Sense
But I did 5 mill' - I ain't been rhyming like Common since.

Jay-Z

#2. I have a dream:
One day we will get to the promised land.
Then the president will be me,
The government will be Shabaam, Mos and Kweli ... that's it!
All wackness is now banned.

Pharoahe Monch

#3. 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

#4. 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.

Talib Kweli

#5. Do the math: You never settle for less than the whole if you knew the half.

Talib Kweli

#6. 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

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

Talib Kweli

#8. 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

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

Talib Kweli

#10. I'm not an artist that has a big, huge radio record that's going to be on BET.

Talib Kweli

#11. If you look at my career, doing albums with Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake, Gucci Mane and Lil Wayne or KRS-One and Jean Grae, I can't be pigeonholed.

Talib Kweli

#12. "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

#13. Young kids should be doing music that has shock value. They'll grow out of it.

Talib Kweli

#14. But you have to be creative on how you sell yourself and market yourself.

Talib Kweli

#15. 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

#16. I tour whether I have album out or not. I tour more than any other hip-hop artist.

Talib Kweli

#17. Please, this is no disrespect to whoever your man is though. This relationship is strictly musical like D'Angelo

Talib Kweli

#18. I think once you're in the public eye, whether you're a boss, a teacher or whatever you do, that you're automatically in the position of role model. You have people looking up to you, so whether you choose to accept it or not is a different question.

Talib Kweli

#19. When I look at the arc of my career, my focus is on lyricism, right? I own that.

Talib Kweli

#20. 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

#21. 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.

Talib Kweli

#22. 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

#23. It's very seductive to focus on what you don't like as opposed to celebrating all that it is that you do.

Talib Kweli

#24. 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

#25. A flower that grow in the ghetto know more about survival than the one from fresh meadows.

Talib Kweli

#26. 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.

Talib Kweli

#27. They hope for the Apocalypse like a self-fulfilling prophecy
Tell me when do we stop it?
Do they ask you your religion before you rent an apartment?
Is the answer burning Korans so that we can defend Islamics?

Talib Kweli

#28. I will never do a record without some sense of responsibility.

Talib Kweli

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

Talib Kweli

#30. 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

#31. This goes out to freedom fighters, graffiti writers, innocent lifers, grassroots organizers

Talib Kweli

#32. You gotta eat right, you gotta have healthy habits, you know, and balance out your decadence with a healthy lifestyle during the day.

Talib Kweli

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

Talib Kweli

#34. 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.

Talib Kweli

#35. I don't go into any album with pressing issues. I just try to write songs.

Talib Kweli

#36. 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

#37. Consider me the entity within the industry without a history of spitting the epitome of stupidity.

Talib Kweli

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

Talib Kweli

#39. I don't care if Rick Ross is 40 years old
he's a misguided 40-year-old person.

Talib Kweli

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. I think hip hop is a dance music that's rebellious by nature.

Talib Kweli

#46. 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

#47. Honestly, you have to take care of yourself. That's probably something I have learned on the road.

Talib Kweli

#48. 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

#49. I'm not looking to set a standard ... but, I believe I have offered a challenge to others with my work.

Talib Kweli

#50. You'll be fooled if you only get your hip-hop from the mainstream, you know. The things that move people are not just found in the mainstream cultures. And when we talk about hip-hop in general, hip-hop's basically preoccupied with life.

Talib Kweli

#51. 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

#52. You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.

Talib Kweli

#53. 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

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. 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

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

Talib Kweli

#60. 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.

Talib Kweli

#61. 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

#62. 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

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

Talib Kweli

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

Talib Kweli

#65. When I met you it was magic ...
We polar opposites, but attracted like we was magnets.

Talib Kweli

#66. 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.

Talib Kweli

#67. 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

#68. 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.

Talib Kweli

#69. Hi-Tek is on three or four songs on the new record.

Talib Kweli

#70. 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

#71. If you ain't using all the talents God provided you with
For the betterment of Man, understand,
You ain't nothing but a waste.

Talib Kweli

#72. 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

#73. I don't feel comfortable making empty music.

Talib Kweli

#74. The most important time in history is - NOW - the present,
So count your blessings cause time can't define the essence.

Talib Kweli

#75. 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

#76. Ain't nobody making music to not be heard and the easiest way to be heard is to be on the radio, but you should never compromise who you are, your values or your morals.

Talib Kweli

#77. 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

#78. I met Mos Def around that time but I didn't hook up with him until I was about 17 or 18.

Talib Kweli

#79. 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

#80. I think its man's nature to go to war and fight.

Talib Kweli

#81. 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

#82. 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.

Talib Kweli

#83. I think music sharing of any kind is great.

Talib Kweli

#84. 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

#85. Hip-hop isn't as complex as a woman is.

Talib Kweli

#86. You have to know when to be arrogant. You have to when to be humble. You have to know when to be hard and you have to know when to be soft.

Talib Kweli

#87. 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

#88. Life is a beautiful struggle..

Talib Kweli

#89. That's what hip-hop is: It's sociology and English put to a beat, you know.

Talib Kweli

#90. 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

#91. Love is blind, you just see bright light

Talib Kweli

#92. 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

#93. 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

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

Talib Kweli

#95. The responsibility of an artist is to be honest with themselves.

Talib Kweli

#96. And you know, art as commerce, doesn't really make too much sense, they don't go together.

Talib Kweli

#97. A true artist does not depend on radio for success. A true fan does not let radio determine what they support

Talib Kweli

#98. Things are fluid in this world, and if you don't remain fluid, you get lost in the sauce.

Talib Kweli

#99. 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

#100. 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