Quotes About Def

#1. I don't care about what brand you are, I'm concerned what type of man you are, what your principles and standards are.

Mos Def

#2. 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.

Mos Def

#3. I ain't no perfect man I'm tryna do the best that I can with what it is I have.

Mos Def

#4. 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

#5. If Islam's sole interest is the welfare of mankind, then Islam is the strongest advocate of human rights anywhere on Earth.

Mos Def

#6. Bob Marley performed the 'One Love Peace' concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There's always been that in black music and culture in general. It's no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what's going on in black life. It's not unusual for hip-hop.

Mos Def

#7. Why did one straw break the camel's back?
Here's the secret:
The million other straws underneath it.

Mos Def

#8. To me, it's like happiness is about happiness, but happiness is a fight.

Mos Def

#9. I can think of no one more relevant and credible in the hip-hop community to build upon Def Jam's fantastic legacy and move the company into its next groundbreaking era.

Jay-Z

#10. I have no confidence issues with the impact or the quality of the music. No one in hip-hop, before this point and to this point, with all due respect, has done this.

Mos Def

#11. They are usually multi-talented, with dozens of ideas streaming across the "high-def" screen of their minds in a moving sort of neon, pulsating display of enticing, seemingly impractical options for making contributions to humanity. Creative

Jo Ann Brown-Scott

#12. History has proven that it's impossible to crush the artist. There's always gonna be a need for somebody to write a poem or sing a song about something, about life - that makes it real. There's the word that goes beyond the word.

Mos Def

#13. But the irony is that because the band isn't the focus any more, it allows me the chance to enjoy being a member of Def Leppard much more.

Rick Allen

#14. I've always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little.

Taylor Swift

#15. I'm trying to get low. People's personalities can get in the way of their own work.

Mos Def

#16. Hollywood wanted a certain type of comic - that Def Jam comedy style of comic that was very loud, very brash, very much from the ghetto, had that sensibility.

Larry Wilmore

#17. My radio's loud like a fire alarm:
The floor vibrates, the walls cave in,
The bass makes my eardrums seem thin.
Def sounds in my ride, yes the front and back ...
You would think it was a party, not a Cadillac!

LL Cool J

#18. I just didn't wanna put the pressure on myself to be in there [Def Jam South] to work as an artist and to have the hat as the executive with other projects.

DJ Khaled

#19. 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.

Mos Def

#20. I pride myself on being the guy who can do Def Comedy Jam and Charlie Rose. And do well on both.

Chris Rock

#21. You've got to validate every day. There are those who just put a stamp on it and say, "This is gonna be a good day and I'm not gonna let anything else make it a bad day."

Mos Def

#22. Live now for the promise of the Infinite

Mos Def

#23. I remember 'Def Comedy Jam' being a big deal and kids talking about it in school, but it was never, 'I want to do that.'

Hannibal Buress

#24. I never had any ambitions of being a movie star or anything like that, but you know, this is nice.

Mos Def

#25. I give a damn if any fan recalls my legacy, I'm trying to live life in the sight of GOD's memory.

Mos Def

#26. Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape now let it fall - HUNGH

Mos Def

#27. Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years it's a name that the streets taught me a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name and it's time to expand and move on.

Mos Def

#28. I don't want to waste anyone's time or money. I want to give people some truth and positive heart lift.

Mos Def

#29. I don't read my own press, so I don't know what's being reported on a daily basis - I only hear about things when they reach a sort of Def-Con status, and my publicist calls me because we have to do some damage control.

Megan Fox

#30. Everything's got space between it, the planets, trees, your eyes. Your eyes get too close together, it's a whole different world. You can lose perspective.

Mos Def

#31. I feel like being into the beat of your own drum has become too prominent in the culture.

Mos Def

#32. Hip-hop is the last true folk art.

Mos Def

#33. I got my first exposure to Islam when I was 13.

Mos Def

#34. Good art provides people with a vocabulary about things they can't articulate.

Mos Def

#35. Breathe in ... inhale vapors from bright stars that shine,
Breathe out ... weed smoke retrace the skyline.

Mos Def

#36. I'm blacked than midnight on Broadway and Myrtle

Mos Def

#37. You want to know how to rhyme, then learn how to add. It's mathematics.

Mos Def

#38. This thing called rhymin' is no different than coal minin';
We both on assignment to unearth the diamond.

Mos Def

#39. If you're going to do Chuck Berry, you got to, you know, go all out, and the duck walk is just kind of you know, cursory. That's like standing.

Mos Def

#40. I play the guitar. This year at the Sundance film festival, I joined the band from 'The Guitar' on stage. We warmed up for Patti Smith, and then the director Michel Gondry got on the drums to play some songs from the soundtrack to his film Be Kind Rewind with Mos Def. It was pretty mad.

Saffron Burrows

#41. I'm growing as an individual, but your always growing. All of my albums are snapshots of where I am artistically.

Mos Def

#42. The ability to have somebody read something and see it, or for somebody to paint an entire landscape of visual imagery with just sheets of words - that's magical. That's what I've been trying to strive for - to draw a clear picture, to open up a new dimension.

Mos Def

#43. The dimensions of video game characters, even when they're scanned from real people, are beefed up with exaggerated proportions in games like Def Jam: Fight for NY to give them more pop.

Cliff Bleszinski

#44. So So Def has been one of the most successful and consistent labels in the game in the last 10 years.

Jermaine Dupri

#45. I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product, not a person, so I've been going by Yasiin since '99. At first it was just for friends and family, but now I'm declaring it openly.

Mos Def

#46. At its heart, music is all higher mathematics.

Mos Def

#47. The quality of life depends upon the ability of society to teach it's members how to live in harmony with their environment-def ined first as family, then the community, then the world and its resources.

Ellen Swallow Richards

#48. We blasted holes in the night until she bled sunshine

Mos Def

#49. Focused. I'm a hustler. And my hustle is trying to figure out the best ways to do what I like without having to do much else.

Mos Def

#50. Hard rock for me is AC/DC, Def Leppard, Tesla, Kiss. Metal tends to be louder, ruder, darker, like Judas Priest, Slayer, Iron Maiden.

Eddie Trunk

#51. A person's strength is to know their weaknesses.

Russell Simmons

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

Talib Kweli

#53. Hi-def is merely the latest in a string of evolutional leaps that have transformed the way we sit slumped in front of a box wishing we were dead.

Charlie Brooker

#54. I can't control what people think. I'm not trying to manipulate people's thoughts or sentiments. I write all the time. You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions. It's machine-like how things are run now in hip-hop, and my ambitions are different.

Mos Def

#55. I want to be necessary and do good works. I ain't here to waste nobody's time, because I don't want you to waste mine.

Mos Def

#56. I can scare the pants off the holiest ghost.

Def Leppard

#57. Fear not of men because men must die. Mind over matter and soul before flesh.

Mos Def

#58. Mos Def is one of the most creative, intelligent human beings I've had the opportunity to work with. He is fun. The entire time, he would go in and out of different characters, just for the fun of it. Awesome energy.

Jill Scott

#59. I don't dislike rappers or hip-hop or people who like it. I went to the Def Jam tour in Manchester in the '80s when rap was inspirational. Public Enemy were awesome. But it's all about status and bling now, and it doesn't say anything to me.

Noel Gallagher

#60. I'm doing exactly what I was supposed to do. Yeah. I didn't exactly choose this. My own life, if it were up to me, would be very, very quiet. I'd be like a shopkeeper, a book collector, or something like that. I'm not like this. Myself as a performer and an artist is totally different from who I am.

Mos Def

#61. I've always been an outsider. When I did magic, I was the only kid. When I worked with Johnny Cash, I was completely out of place in Nashville. And when I started Def Jam, I was the only white guy in the hip-hop world.

Rick Rubin

#62. You can positively affect and change a social circumstance with art, and it's vital that a change happens now.

Mos Def

#63. Record companies are not necessarily interested in you realizing your artistic dream. The bottom line is that they got to sell records.

Mos Def

#64. 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."

Mos Def

#65. But even creeps deserve to live someplace halfway decent.

Mos Def

#66. I just don't think it's very dignified to ask people to like you. You can just wind up being somebody's ottoman.

Mos Def

#67. Make today's solid ground out of yesterday's quicksand.

Mos Def

#68. I don't have advice for people on how to dress. People should dress based on what they find beautiful. My best advice: Keep your clothes clean.

Mos Def

#69. Hip-Hop went from selling crack to smoking it

Mos Def

#70. Hip-hop is rock & roll. What the hell is Wu-Tang but Motorhead?

Mos Def

#71. What made me want to become a recording artist; I was the first artist that was repeatedly asked by a label to record with them. That label was Def Jam Records.

Chuck D

#72. I guess something that you love to do, you gotta ease up off it and give it a little space, come back and be fresh to it.

Mos Def

#73. I didn't want to have to deal with having any moniker or separation between the self that I see and know myself as.

Mos Def

#74. I get reminded a lot of the time that my life is a little bit different, but I'm just trying to keep it as regular as possible because I like it that way.

Mos Def

#75. Crack mothers, crack babies and AIDS patients
Youngbloods can't spell, but they could rock you in PlayStation.

Mos Def

#76. Def Leppard is obviously a different band that we are, but the music work well tighter. And the audiences seem work well together too. We are opening, but we're having a good time.

Joan Jett

#77. I've been fortunate with my acting career. A lot of scripts come to me. I don't mind auditioning if something that requires that, but I haven't had to in awhile, which is a nice place to be 'cause I've been on quite a lot of auditions in my life.

Mos Def

#78. 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.

Mos Def

#79. Even Def Leppard couldn't get him out of his funk. When the Def couldn't crank you, it was way past time to shoot someone.

Ken Bruen

#80. If 'Life in Marvelous Times' can't get on the radio, then I don't need to be on the radio.

Mos Def

#81. I love jazz and pop rock and country. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Anne Murray - if I hear something really great ... I want to be a part of it.

Natalie MacMaster

#82. I don't wanna get into that space where a lot of guys now, their solo album is like eight or 10 songs with other people, you don't get an idea of who this guy is. I just wasn't interested in that.

Mos Def

#83. I been to many malls from state to state,But I've never been in, say, one this great.I hate to say, about the other shopping centers that's left,But the Albee Square Mall is the doo-doo-def!

Biz Markie

#84. I feel like I was the only person who was capable of making this type of music in this type of way. I don't rap like nobody, I don't try to sound like nobody.

Mos Def

#85. I think Def Jam happened to be one of the labels that really didn't have a good grip on things that were going on. I'll say that - that's my political answer.

Joe Budden

#86. My Umi said shine your light on the world, shine your light for the world to see

Mos Def

#87. Twitter freaks me out. You have followers? It feels so obsessive and proprietary.

Mos Def

#88. We just gotta fly
I can take you thru the center of the dark
We gonna fly
On a collision course to crash into my heart
I will be your, I will be your rocket

Def Leppard

#89. My presence speaks volumes before I say a word.

Mos Def

#90. I've always loved music and I love the language, which is a huge reason why I'm part of theater.

Mos Def

#91. I thought everybody got into rock 'n' roll because they didn't want to follow instructions.

Mos Def

#92. I've always loved rhyming. I love language.

Mos Def

#93. Peace before everything, God before anything,
Love before anything, real before everything,
Home before any place, shoot before anything,
Style and state radiate, Love Power slay the hate.

Mos Def

#94. The world has wanted me to speak differently than I speak. I speak like my mom. I speak like the whitest white dude. I speak like a "Def Comedy Jam" comedian doing an impression of a white guy.

Jordan Peele

#95. I'm just an artist and I'm doin' what I like to do.

Mos Def

#96. Don't look down, it's an impossible view; Fly like an eagle whatever you do

Mos Def

#97. The test in life nowadays is just trying to keep yourself charged up with enough good feeling. It's like, "OK what am I going to do to feel really good today?" Not like, some chick or a drink ...

Mos Def

#98. Young bloods can't spell but they can rock you in Playstation

Mos Def

#99. I don't hate nobody. I hate certain conditions that are inflicted upon the people - and they're helpless with it.

Mos Def

#100. I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.

Jay-Z