Quote

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

Talib Kweli

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Talib Kweli
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 3
Musician
Poet
Rapper
Singer
Songwriter
Brooklyn
New York
Talib Kweli Greene
Others
Work
Believe
Offered
Standard
Challenge
Standards
Challenges
Looking

More quotes by Talib Kweli

Image
If I focus on being an activist and my job is to be a rapper, I'm not going to be as good of a rapper. I need to focus on hip-hop and focus on making the music, so that when the activists come to me and they need my voice to create a platform, then I've got enough people listening to me. Not because I'm conscious, but because I'm dope.
Talib Kweli
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I not only wanted to showcase lyrical skills but also continue to drop knowledge on the hiphop community. Im looking to elevate through my music, and through my music I educate.
Talib Kweli
Image
God gave us music, so we play with our words.
Talib Kweli
Image
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
Image
Unfortunately hip-hop is so competitive that in order for fringe groups to get in, you gotta be better than whoever's the best. So 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
Image
I'm not an artist that has a big, huge radio record that's going to be on BET. I'm not, at this point, gunning for like, Oh, I'm gonna kill them in the first week. But as people slowly discover the album they realize it's better than a lot of what they've been listening to all year.
Talib Kweli
Image
As far as being on a major label, some labels get it and get what they have to do, and some labels don't. I don't think the label I'm on necessarily gets it, but I think over time they're gonna have to.
Talib Kweli
Image
I have such respect for the art of deejaying. I hesitate to even call myself a deejay.
Talib Kweli
Image
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
Image
You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Talib Kweli
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.
Talib Kweli
Image
I just got a new manager. He's like, So what do you want to do with the deejay thing? I'm like, The deejay thing for me is more my hobby. It's great when you can supplement your income, when you have a weekly or something, it's fun. It's really a hobby, because I don't want it to take away from what I do, which is emceeing.
Talib Kweli
Image
They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for.
Talib Kweli
Image
Young kids should be doing music that has shock value. They'll grow out of it.
Talib Kweli
Image
Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.
Talib Kweli