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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
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Talib Kweli
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 3
Musician
Poet
Rapper
Singer
Songwriter
Brooklyn
New York
Talib Kweli Greene
Question
Everybody
Able
Better
Needs
Rapper
Gay
Asked
Longer
More quotes by Talib Kweli
I tour whether I have album out or not. I tour more than any other hip-hop artist.
Talib Kweli
My rhymes are like shot clocks, interstate cops and blood clots, my point is your flow gets stopped.
Talib Kweli
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.
Talib Kweli
If you ain't using all the talents God provided you with For the betterment of Man, understand, You ain't nothing but a waste.
Talib Kweli
Young kids should be doing music that has shock value. They'll grow out of it.
Talib Kweli
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
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
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
Art Imitates life, of course, is that phrase by Oscar Wilde. I called that song Art Imitates Life because Oh No was in the studio and he actually came up with that hook. When I was trying to figure out a name for the record, it just kind of made sense.
Talib Kweli
I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.
Talib Kweli
I have enough rhythm to blend at this point. I have enough rhythm to blend one song into another. But man, I have such respect for the art of deejaying. I hesitate to even call myself a deejay.
Talib Kweli
Everybody could write, deejay, rap. Everybody could do it all.
Talib Kweli
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
I ignored your aura but it grabbed me by the hand, like the moon pulled the tide, and the tide pulled the sand.
Talib Kweli
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
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
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.
Talib Kweli
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
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
The most important time in history is - NOW - the present, So count your blessings cause time can't define the essence.
Talib Kweli