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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
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Talib Kweli
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 3
Musician
Poet
Rapper
Singer
Songwriter
Brooklyn
New York
Talib Kweli Greene
Gonna
Wasn
Found
Enough
Children
Always
Love
Rhyming
More quotes by Talib Kweli
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
I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.
Talib Kweli
And you know, art as commerce, doesn't really make too much sense, they don't go together.
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
Once you're signed to a label you compromise.
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
But there's so many things in life like women, like children, like God and family that transcends the world of hip-hop.
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
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
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
When I look at the arc of my career, my focus is on lyricism, right? I own that.
Talib Kweli
My fans like to be romantic. I feel like I'm creating at least at the same level or even a higher level of creativity than I was at twenty-one. I've gotten better as an artist.
Talib Kweli
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
I don't care if Rick Ross is 40 years old -- he's a misguided 40-year-old person.
Talib Kweli
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
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 look at the deejay thing as something - I'm good at it because I have my own music. I have enough rhythm to blend at this point.
Talib Kweli
When you have a voice and a platform and you know better, it becomes your moral obligation to support that community. And by extension, you're supporting your family.
Talib Kweli
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
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