I believe excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over.
Hip-hop is a perfect mix between poetry and boxing.
I’m trying to tell the story in the most clear, concise, and truthful way, taking those everyday words and phrases and capturing them in a way that they become something else.
You learn more in failure than you ever do in success.
When people say stuff like, “Oh, that’s soft rock. I don’t listen to that,” I find that elitist. It’s music-racist.
Your future is ahead of you. Imagine the notion of the past fifteen years of your life being a blip in your story.
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 just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape.
I smoked some weed, and that’s how I finished ‘Izzo.’
Driving Benzes with no benefits, not bad huh, for some immigrants.
The day Obama got elected, the gangsta became less relevant.
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 to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.
A poet’s mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level.
You could name practically any problem in the hood and there’d be a rap song for you.
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 all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.
If I was to stop making music tomorrow doesn’t mean suddenly there is this gap. You don’t get elected. The people decide where you are. Whether I’m here or not, if they want you to be at the top then the people will move me out the way.
No matter where you go you are what you are player and you can try to change but that’s just the top layer man you was who you was before you got here.
I love that because that’s what I’m supposed to be doing – whether it’s accepted b everybody or not. I’m supposed to be pushing that envelope and trying new things. And people are supposed to say, Hov, you might have went too far.
My brands are an extension of me. They’re close to me. It’s not like running GM, where there’s no emotional attachment.
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.
I’m a person that works off of music. I let the music dictate the direction.