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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. "
Talib Kweli
Until
Hook
Him
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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. "
Talib Kweli
Order
Empower
Yourself
" Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction. "
Talib Kweli
Politics
Head
Compassion
" And you know, art as commerce, doesn't really make too much sense, they don't go together. "
Talib Kweli
Too Much
You
Go
" I think music sharing of any kind is great. "
Talib Kweli
Sharing
Kind
Music
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Music
Job
Compliment
" Hip-hop isn't as complex as a woman is. "
Talib Kweli
Complex
Hip-Hop
Woman
" So I think hip-hop is moving and is going to continue to move in the direction of rappers just being honest with themselves, whether you're talking about Common and Mos Def or Nas and 50 cent. "
Talib Kweli
Hip-Hop
You
Think
" You gotta eat right, you gotta have healthy habits, you know, and balance out your decadence with a healthy lifestyle during the day. "
Talib Kweli
You
Right
Know
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Money
America
Lazy
" The way I see it, if people truly love my music, they will support me in some way down the road. "
Talib Kweli
Love
Me
Music
" My personal take on politics is I deal with social situations and cultural situations in my music and in my life. I have said on record many times that I haven't voted. I'm not the type of person who says, 'I'm never going to vote.' I think it's clear to me that our system has failed us. "
Talib Kweli
Life
Me
Music
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Step
Relationship
Moment
" The responsibility of an artist is to be honest with themselves. "
Talib Kweli
Responsibility
Honest
Artist
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
You
Career
Albums
" If I'm performing with a DJ, it's all on me to draw the energy. I like the camaraderie of a band. "
Talib Kweli
Me
Like
Energy
" The problem with our role is Americans live in a world of illusion. "
Talib Kweli
Live
Role
Problem
" When I'm in the studio, I'm strictly thinking about the beats, the rhymes and the song. The decision I make once the songs are created, and there's a barcode put on the package, and I'm out there in the street selling it, those decisions as a businessman are different than the creative decisions you make. "
Talib Kweli
Decision
Decisions
Thinking
" Even an independent label is looking for a hit, they're not looking for a record that's not gonna do well. "
Talib Kweli
Even
Independent
Looking
" The only way for me to be an artist is to be honest in my craft. If I veer from that, I'm not giving the investors what they want. Sometimes it's my job as an artist to know what I want to do, even when the fans tell me different. "
Talib Kweli
Giving
Sometimes
Me
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Create
I Am
Me
" Hip-hop is a vehicle. "
Talib Kweli
Vehicle
Hip-Hop
" The materialism, the brashness, the misogyny - everything in hip-hop is amplified. Misogyny is a good example of something that is completely amplified in hip-hop. I do think there is more than enough of a balance, though, for fans who are willing to search it out. "
Talib Kweli
Balance
Enough
Search
" But it becomes disrespectful when the artist's process is not respected. "
Talib Kweli
Becomes
Artist
Process
" My fondest memories were watching the Beastie Boys get prepped to come on stage. They had a lot of antics and they play a lot of basketball... then they were giving out cameras to the crowd, and performing from the bleachers. The most important thing I learned was that you control your crowd, not the other way around. "
Talib Kweli
Memories
Giving
Control
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Focus
Job
Music
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Song
You
Beautiful
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Looking
Community
Knowledge
" I'm a fan of Bjork, a fan of Premier, you know, those are the first two names that come to my mind. You know, I've learned a lot from every person I've collaborated with, from Madlib to Jean Grae and Hi-Tek, to Mos to DJ Quik, to even somebody like Jermaine Dupri. I've taken something important away from every experience. "
Talib Kweli
Mind
Important
Experience
" Things are fluid in this world, and if you don't remain fluid, you get lost in the sauce. "
Talib Kweli
Sauce
Things
World
" There are staples to my show. I have to be conscious about switching things up because I know people who saw me last year will say, 'He did that last time.' But if certain things work, they work. "
Talib Kweli
Work
Me
Time