Quote

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

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
Celebrating
Seductive
Opposed
Celebrate
Focus
Like

More quotes by Talib Kweli

Image
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
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 think hip hop is a dance music that's rebellious by nature.
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
My parents are my biggest influences. My parents and my city. Brooklyn, New York, New York City, the community I grew up. I don't feel like I'm special in that. I feel like that's everybody.
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
Well if somebody's giving me a script, I'll consider it. But it's not something I'm chasing.
Talib Kweli
Image
Hip-hop is a vehicle.
Talib Kweli
Image
I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.
Talib Kweli
Image
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
Image
Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common senseNext best thing I do a record with common sense
Talib Kweli
Image
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
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
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
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
Artists make art for themselves. Art is an honest expression. Artists who pander to their fans by trying to make music for their fans make empty, transparent art. The true fan does not want you to make music for them, they want you to make music for you, because that's the whole reason they fell in love with you in the first place.
Talib Kweli
Image
I think its man's nature to go to war and fight.
Talib Kweli
Image
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
Image
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
Image
A flower that grow in the ghetto know more about survival than the one from fresh meadows.
Talib Kweli