Top 55 Talib Kweli Quotes

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.

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.

I think hip hop is a dance music that’s rebellious by nature.

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?

Once you’re signed to a label you compromise.

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

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.

But it becomes disrespectful when the artist’s process is not respected.

I think the line is where you’re in the studio, you’re creating. That belongs to you as an artist. Nothing should taint that. I shouldn’t be thinking about what the fans want, I shouldn’t be thinking about what the radio wants, what the label wants, what your manager wants, a song for the chicks, a song for the street.

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

You know, I’ve learned a lot from every person I’ve collaborated with, from Madlib to Jean Grae and Hi-Tek, to Mos to DJ Quik, to even somebody like Jermaine Dupri. I’ve taken something important away from every experience.

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.

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

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.

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.

My fondest memories were watching the Beastie Boys get prepped to come on stage. They had a lot of antics and they play a lot of basketball… then they were giving out cameras to the crowd, and performing from the bleachers. The most important thing I learned was that you control your crowd, not the other way around.

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.

Well if somebody’s giving me a script, I’ll consider it. But it’s not something I’m chasing.

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.

The problem with our role is Americans live in a world of illusion.

Even an independent label is looking for a hit, they’re not looking for a record that’s not gonna do well.

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

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.

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.

Woman are complex creatures.

What is Norah Jones’ style? Is it just the albums that we’ve heard? She has a rock group where she plays guitar in, downtown in New York, so do we really know her style?

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.

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

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

War is not civilized.

I’m at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.

You make knowledge relevant to life and you make it important for children to learn things that will really relate to things going on in their lives, and not abstract.

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.

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.

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.

You have to learn how to harness technology so you can use it for positive stuff without being disconnected from nature.

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.

I think its man’s nature to go to war and fight.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I’m not looking to set a standard… but, I believe I have offered a challenge to others with my work.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Hip-hop is a vehicle.

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.

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.

Before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible.

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.