Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who’ve never done anything because if you haven’t been successful, then you don’t know how it feels to lose it all.
Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.
I’m not concerned with noise because I’m playing the long game.
Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.
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 a high pedestal and he lets you down, you never want to experience that pain again.
I get my by any means on, whenever there’s a drought get your umbrellas out because that’s when I brainstorm.
Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music.
I got 99 Problems but Mitt ain’t one.
I’m far from being god, but I work god damn hard.
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.
Don’t make decisions based on fear.
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.
And now we’re lethal, infected with D’Evils.
Jealousy’s a weak emotion.
No one’s walking around here perfect. Everyone’s gonna make mistakes. That’s part of how you learn.
Hip-hop gave a generation a common ground that didn’t require either race to lose anything; everyone gained.
If the beat is time, flow is what we do with that time, how we live through it. The beat is everywhere, but every life has to find its own flow.
I’m a hustler, baby; I sell water to a well!
I believe you can speak things into existence.
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.