A biography for Jay-Zhasn’t been written yet.
“It's hilarious a lot of times. You have a conversation with someone, and he's like, 'You speak so well!' I'm like, 'What do you mean? Do you understand that's an insult?”
“Everyone who makes music is a good collaborator at their foundation because in order to make music, you have to connect to it in a way that other people can't.”
“That was the greatest trick in music that people ever pulled off, to convince artists that you can't be an artist and make money. I think the people that were making the millions said that. It was almost shameful, especially in rock n' roll.”
“I've got a nice collection of paintings - a Basquiat, a black-and-white Warhol that's like a Rorschach test, and I commissioned Takashi Murakami to do a ten-foot joint for me. It's almost like the explosion in Hiroshima with his famous skeleton head. There's a wall above my fireplace reserved for it.”
“The burden of poverty isn't just that you don't always have the things you need, it's the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you'd do anything to lift that burden.”
“The challenge is to get everyone to respect music again, to recognize its value.”
“I'm a mirror. If you're cool with me, I'm cool with you, and the exchange starts. What you see is what you reflect. If you don't like what you see, then you've done something. If I'm standoffish, that's because you are.”
“I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.”
“Rap for me is like making movies, telling stories, and getting the emotions of the songs through in just as deep a way.”
“Hip-hop is more about attaining wealth. People respect success. They respect big. They don't even have to like your music. If you're big enough, people are drawn to you.”
“Providing - that's not love. Being there - that's more important. I mean, we see that. We see that with all these rich socialites. They're crying out for attention; they're hurting for love. I'm not being judgmental - I'm just making an observation. They're crying out for the love that maybe they didn't get at home, and they got everything.”
“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.”
“Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out.”
“Hip-hop has done more for race relations than most cultural icons; and I say save Martin Luther King, because his 'I Have A Dream' speech was realized when Obama was elected into office.”
“Nothing me and Kanye can do musically was gonna match the event of what we were trying to do. So we were trying to deliver an album and experience at one time; that was the idea for 'Watch The Throne'.”
“Do you know how many athletes go broke three years after they stop playing? I want to help them hold on to their money. I mean, I know about budgets.”
“I'm just saying the producers and people who work on music are getting left out - that's when it starts getting criminal. It's like you're working hard, and you're not receiving. In any other business, people would be standing before Congress. They have antitrust laws against this kind of behavior.”
“New York - I'm connected. This is my core. I feel like if I'm not connected to New York, then I don't even know what to do with myself.”
“When I came into the music, I was forced to be a CEO. I was forced to be an entrepreneur; I was forced to... because I was looking for a deal. I didn't have this grand scheme of starting a record company and then morphing into a clothing empire.”
“Companies that pretend to care about music and really care about other things - whether it be hardware, whether it be advertising - and now they look at music as a loss leader. And we know music isn't a loss leader; music is an important part of our lives.”