Jay-Z Quotes

237 quotes in 2567 categories

• The average rap life is two or three albums. You're lucky to get to your second album in rap!
• By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained…
• I collect art, and I drink wine... things that I like that I had never been exposed to. But I never said, 'I'm going to…
• 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…
• Growing up, politics never trickled down to the areas we come from. But people from Obama's camp, and Obama himself, reached out to me and…
• I can think of no one more relevant and credible in the hip-hop community to build upon Def Jam's fantastic legacy and move the company…
• I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and…
• I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity…
• I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice - anything just to get a paper…
• When you're growing up, your dad is your superhero. Once you've let yourself fall that in love with someone, once you put him on such…
• As sure as this Earth is turnin, souls burnin / In search of higher learnin, turnin in every direction seeking direction / My moms cryin…
• Only God can judge me so I'm gone, either love me or leave me alone.
• Jealousy’s a weak emotion.
• Life is for living, not living uptight, see ya somewhere up in the sky.
• A poet's mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.
• I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man!
• I'm a hustler, baby; I sell water to a well!
• You know the type: loud as a motorbike but wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight.
• You could name practically any problem in the hood and there'd be a rap song for you.
• Hip-hop gave a generation a common ground that didn't require either race to lose anything; everyone gained.

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