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" I think its man's nature to go to war and fight. "
Talib Kweli
Nature
Think
Go
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" I'm not looking to set a standard... but, I believe I have offered a challenge to others with my work. "
Talib Kweli
Believe
Work
Set
" Woman are complex creatures. "
Talib Kweli
Creatures
Complex
Woman
" 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
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Good
Money
Hip-Hop
" 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? "
Talib Kweli
New York
Know
Style
" We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of. "
Talib Kweli
Things
World
Doing
" Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction. "
Talib Kweli
Politics
Head
Compassion
" 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
" I don't feel comfortable making empty music. "
Talib Kweli
Making
Comfortable
Feel
" Honestly, you have to take care of yourself. That's probably something I have learned on the road. "
Talib Kweli
Yourself
Road
Take Care
" 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
" 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
" 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
" There just needs to be a gay rapper. He doesn't have to be flamboyant, just a rapper who identifies as gay - who's better than everybody. Unfortunately hip-hop is so competitive that in order for fringe groups to get in, you gotta be better than whoever's the best. "
Talib Kweli
Better
Gay
Hip-Hop
" My musical influence is really from my father. He was a DJ in college. My parents met at New York University. So he listened to, you know, Motown, and he listened to Bob Dylan. He listened to Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones, but he also listened to reggae music. And he collected vinyl. "
Talib Kweli
Grateful
Parents
Music
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Think
America
Words
" I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration. "
Talib Kweli
Good
Collaboration
You
" Before Eminem, the idea that there would be a white rapper that anybody would really check for was fantastic or amazing or impossible. "
Talib Kweli
Amazing
Rapper
Impossible
" 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'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
" 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
Me
Son
" I think music sharing of any kind is great. "
Talib Kweli
Sharing
Kind
Music
" Hip-hop is a vehicle. "
Talib Kweli
Vehicle
Hip-Hop
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Story
More
Hip-Hop
" War is not civilized. "
Talib Kweli
Civilized
War
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Talib Kweli
Learn
Children
Life
" You have to know when to be arrogant. You have to when to be humble. You have to know when to be hard and you have to know when to be soft. "
Talib Kweli
Hard
You
Know
" Once you're signed to a label you compromise. "
Talib Kweli
Label
Signed
You