Jay-Z Quotes

Jay-Z (31)

Birth:	4th December, 1969
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Singer

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Today's Anniversary - 19th May

Births

• 1948 - Grace Jones
• 1941 - Nora Ephron
• 1959 - Nicole Brown Simpson
• 1966 - Jodi Picoult
• 1935 - David Downs Hartman

Deaths

• 1971 - Ogden Nash
• 1954 - Charles Ives
• 1795 - Portrait of James Boswell
• 1864 - Nathaniel Hawthorne
• 1917 - Belva Lockwood

• A poet’s mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.

  Jay-Z

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  Tags in Poetry

• You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like ‘I still go to the projects.’ I’m like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it’s so cool?

  Jay-Z

• Wherever I go, I bring the culture with me, so that they can understand that it’s attainable. I didn’t do it any other way than through hip-hop.

  Jay-Z

• When the TV version of Annie came on, I was drawn to it. It was the struggle of this poor kid in this environment and how her life changed. It immediately resonated.

  Jay-Z

• They say a midget standing on a giant’s shoulders can see much further than the giant. So I got the whole rap world on my shoulders, they trying to see further than I am.

  Jay-Z

• The burden of poverty isn’t just that you don’t always have the things you need, it’s the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you’d do anything to lift that burden.

  Jay-Z

• The average rap life is two or three albums. You’re lucky to get to your second album in rap!

  Jay-Z

• That’s why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club. People are intermingling, hanging out, having fun, enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It’s worldwide. Everywhere you go, people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that.

  Jay-Z

• Racism is taught in the home. We agree on that? Well, it’s very hard to teach racism to a teenager who’s listening to rap music and who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg. It’s hard to say, ‘That guy is less than you.’ The kid is like, ‘I like that guy, he’s cool. How is he less than me?

  Jay-Z

• One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That’s the American ideal. Poor people don’t like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank, they don’t like to think of themselves as poor.

  Jay-Z

• My thing is related to who I am as a person. The clothes are an extension of me. The music is an extension of me. All my businesses are part of the culture, so I have to stay true to whatever I’m feeling at the time, whatever direction I’m heading in. And hopefully, everyone follows.

  Jay-Z

• My brands are an extension of me. They’re close to me. It’s not like running GM, where there’s no emotional attachment.

  Jay-Z

• It’s hilarious a lot of times. You have a conversation with someone, and he’s like, ‘You speak so well!’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean? Do you understand that’s an insult?

  Jay-Z

• It was a weird mix of emotions. One day, your best friend could be killed. The day before, you could be celebrating him getting a brand-new bike.

  Jay-Z

• It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we’d play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.

  Jay-Z

• I’ve never looked at myself and said that I need to be a certain way to be around a certain sort of people. I’ve always wanted to stay true to myself, and I’ve managed to do that. People have to accept that.

  Jay-Z

• I’m hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That’s what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that’s from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter.

  Jay-Z

• I’m far from being god, but I work god damn hard.

  Jay-Z

• I’m a mirror. If you’re cool with me, I’m cool with you, and the exchange starts. What you see is what you reflect. If you don’t like what you see, then you’ve done something. If I’m standoffish, that’s because you are.

  Jay-Z

• I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice – anything just to get a paper bag. And I’d write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook.

  Jay-Z