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" As an artist, I have to be a leader of my fans, not, like, follow them. Because if I chose to follow them, you know, they could do it. You know, it's me who's doing it. "
Talib Kweli
Doing
Know
You
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" I don't think that early hip hop stood out to be a social critique. A lot of fans of mine think that hip hop's ultimate responsibility is to critique social structures. "
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" Hip-hop isn't as complex as a woman is. "
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" People can be inspired the way I've been inspired by music. "
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" I am not a prisoner of conscious, but people try to make me one sometimes. It is both a gift and a curse. It's a high honour but can create limitations - I have to be fluid. "
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" There's consciousness in my music, and my music comes from a conscious place. And when people say that, I certainly take it as a compliment. But my job, in terms of selling my music, is to be universal and to try to get it to everybody. "
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" 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. "
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" You gotta eat right, you gotta have healthy habits, you know, and balance out your decadence with a healthy lifestyle during the day. "
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" So I just had to step up how I was doing it and the moment that I stepped up and the moment I focused all my energy on that is when things started to happen. So there's a direct relationship between my inspiration and my output. "
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" Being called 'conscious' is a great thing to be, but it's the connotations and preconceived notions that come with the buying audience about what conscious music can be. "
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" What's more condescending and corny than someone telling you how much more money they have than you and telling you basically, 'I don't care about poor people,' which is a large part of what you hear of corporate hip-hop on the radio. "
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" I'm not an artist that has a big, huge radio record that's going to be on BET. "
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" 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. "
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" I think hip-hop is no more misogynistic than America is as a society. I just think hip-hop is a lot more brash, a lot more bold, a lot more loquacious. There are a lot more words that go into a hip-hop song than go into a regular song. "
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" It doesn't get any more underground, conscious or indie than Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, but because they got a couple of really big pop hits, actually some of the biggest pop hits that hip-hop has ever seen, people are missing that part of their story. People are not counting that blessing. "
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" Even an independent label is looking for a hit, they're not looking for a record that's not gonna do well. "
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" If you look at my career, doing albums with Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake, Gucci Mane and Lil Wayne or KRS-One and Jean Grae, I can't be pigeonholed. "
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" What is Norah Jones' style? Is it just the albums that we've heard? She has a rock group where she plays guitar in, downtown in New York, so do we really know her style? "
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" 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. "
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" I met Mos Def around that time but I didn't hook up with him until I was about 17 or 18. "
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" I think the line is where you're in the studio, you're creating. That belongs to you as an artist. Nothing should taint that. I shouldn't be thinking about what the fans want, I shouldn't be thinking about what the radio wants, what the label wants, what your manager wants, a song for the chicks, a song for the street. "
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" I not only wanted to showcase lyrical skills but also continue to drop knowledge on the hiphop community. I'm looking to elevate through my music, and through my music I educate. "
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" When Occupy Wall Street happened, I took my money out of Citibank. I already had problems with all the banks - Citibank, Bank of America - but I was kind of just too lazy to take my money out until I saw how Citibank responded to Occupy Wall Street. "
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" I tour whether I have album out or not. I tour more than any other hip-hop artist. "
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" Artists look at the environment, and the best artists correctly diagnose the problem. I'm not saying artists can't be leaders, but that's not the job of art, to lead. Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte - there are artists all through history who have become leaders, but that was already in them, nothing to do with their art. "
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" Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction. "
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" Homosexuality in hip-hop is an extension of homosexuality in the black community. The black community is very, very conservative when it comes to homosexuality, and I don't mean conservative in the good way, like we're saving money. I mean very intolerant. "
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" But it becomes disrespectful when the artist's process is not respected. "
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