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" I take certain steps to make sure I'm relevant artistically. I always have new music and a reason to be on the road. I'm not just playing 'Get By' over and over. I have 12 albums. "

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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. "

Talib Kweli

Create

I Am

" Woman are complex creatures. "

" 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. "

" Things are fluid in this world, and if you don't remain fluid, you get lost in the sauce. "

" Hip-hop isn't as complex as a woman is. "

" I don't go into any album with pressing issues. I just try to write songs. "

" Before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible. "

" The problem with our role is Americans live in a world of illusion. "

" But it becomes disrespectful when the artist's process is not respected. "

" I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think its man's nature to go to war and fight. "

Talib Kweli

Nature

Think

" Honestly, you have to take care of yourself. That's probably something I have learned on the road. "

" You gotta eat right, you gotta have healthy habits, you know, and balance out your decadence with a healthy lifestyle during the day. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I think music sharing of any kind is great. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My kids are the most inspiring thing that pushes me. It used to be because they were born, and I had to take care of them. Now it's because my son raps, and he's better than me. So now I gotta keep up with him, you know what I'm saying? "

Talib Kweli

Better

Son

" You make knowledge relevant to life and you make it important for children to learn things that will really relate to things going on in their lives, and not abstract. "

" I think once you're in the public eye, whether you're a boss, a teacher or whatever you do, that you're automatically in the position of role model. You have people looking up to you, so whether you choose to accept it or not is a different question. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I will never do a record without some sense of responsibility. "

" 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. "