Quote

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

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Talib Kweli
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 3
Musician
Poet
Rapper
Singer
Songwriter
Brooklyn
New York
Talib Kweli Greene
Never
Radio
Nobody
Heard
Moral
Values
Making
Easiest
Music
Morals
Way
Compromise

More quotes by Talib Kweli

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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Hip-hop is a vehicle.
Talib Kweli
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Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common senseNext best thing I do a record with common sense
Talib Kweli
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Even an independent label is looking for a hit, they're not looking for a record that's not gonna do well.
Talib Kweli
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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
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God gave us music, so we play with our words.
Talib Kweli
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I was kind of just too lazy to take my money out of the bank until I saw how Citi Bank responded to Occupy Wall Street.
Talib Kweli
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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
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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
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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?
Talib Kweli
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Artists look at the environment, and the best artists correctly diagnose the problem. I'm not saying artists can't be leaders, but that's not the job of art, to lead. Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte - there are artists all through history who have become leaders, but that was already in them, nothing to do with their art.
Talib Kweli
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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
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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
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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
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Once you're signed to a label you compromise.
Talib Kweli
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Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.
Talib Kweli