Kweli Quotes & Sayings

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

The most important time in history is - NOW - the present,
So count your blessings cause time can't define the essence. — Talib Kweli

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

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

You see somebody rapping and you're like, "Nah, my cousin can do that." You're spoiled by the experience. Overseas, it's still something that people can appreciate. — Talib Kweli

Why give you the cure when the disease makes money? — Talib Kweli

Well if somebody's giving me a script, I'll consider it. But it's not something I'm chasing. — Talib Kweli

Consider me the entity within the industry without a history of spitting the epitome of stupidity. — Talib Kweli

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

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

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

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. — Talib Kweli

As far as my New York influence, one thing I'm proud of in my career is, I rep Brooklyn, New York all day. But people don't look at my music as New York music. People consider my music underground music. — Talib Kweli

Just because no one can understand how you speak,
Don't necessarily mean that what you be sayin is deep. — Talib Kweli

Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction. — Talib Kweli

Hip-hop is a vehicle. — Talib Kweli

Do the math: You never settle for less than the whole if you knew the half. — Talib Kweli

And you know, art as commerce, doesn't really make too much sense, they don't go together. — Talib Kweli

Coltrane had a sax, Dale Earnhardt drives a race car and everybody has their tools. — Talib Kweli

They hope for the Apocalypse like a self-fulfilling prophecy
Tell me when do we stop it?
Do they ask you your religion before you rent an apartment?
Is the answer burning Korans so that we can defend Islamics? — Talib Kweli

I think its man's nature to go to war and fight. — Talib Kweli

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

But there's so many things in life like women, like children, like God and family that transcends the world of hip-hop. — Talib Kweli

I remember looking back on a photo of me ... wearing a suit that was, like, two sizes too big for me. I think a lot of guys don't know what fits. — Talib Kweli

I see that happening with hip hop purists now. Where you have an artist like a Kendrick [Lamar] or a Drake, who are really trying different things emotionally, different things musically, and on a mainstream level. And you have underground hip hop fans dissing it, for the simple fact that it's mainstream - not because what they're doing is whack, or what they're doing is not sincere. — Talib Kweli

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

War is not civilized. — Talib Kweli

My rhymes are like shot clocks,
interstate cops
and blood clots,
my point is your flow gets stopped. — Talib Kweli

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

I gotta be dope first. I gotta be appealing to your senses, and to what you like first. Then the message happens. Then you relate to the message. — Talib Kweli

They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for. — Talib Kweli

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

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

If lyrics sold then truth be told/I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z. — Talib Kweli

You gotta get back to your essence,
Use your gifts and share your presence,
Don't count your dollars 'til you count your blessings. — Talib Kweli

I support the idea that artists have to make a stand. I'm with that - you're putting the discussion on the table and you're letting people know. You're being brave as an artist and responsible to the community. — Talib Kweli

A true artist does not depend on radio for success. A true fan does not let radio determine what they support — Talib Kweli

I met Mos Def around that time but I didn't hook up with him until I was about 17 or 18. — Talib Kweli

Who you? Your name smaller than fine grains in couscous
It's the highest calibre, your calibre is deuce deuce — Talib Kweli

I have a luxury of people coming to see me whether I play for the crowd or not. I don't take that lightly. — Talib Kweli

I will never do a record without some sense of responsibility. — Talib Kweli

Hip hop has always been, for us, for artists who are pure to the craft - any place overseas, whether it's Australia, any place in Asia, Germany, Africa, it becomes something where you can still go and work. Hip hop is an import culture. We're spoiled by it here. It's homegrown. — Talib Kweli

Or is it the mind state that's ill, creating crime rates to fill the new prisons the build — Talib Kweli

I'm not an artist that has a big, huge radio record that's going to be on BET. — Talib Kweli

A flower that grow in the ghetto know more about survival than the one from fresh meadows. — Talib Kweli

I like the fact that I can rep New York, but my style does not - I'm not trapped in a New York thing. I can do art songs with other artists and it's seamless. — Talib Kweli

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

These niggaz ain't thugs, the real thugs is the government.
Don't matter if you Independent, Democrat or Republican,
Niggaz politickin' the street, get into beef,
Start blastin' ... now a new cat is executive chief. — Talib Kweli

Artists make art for themselves. Art is an honest expression. Artists who pander to their fans by trying to make music "for" their fans make empty, transparent art. The true fan does not want you to make music for them, they want you to make music for you, because that's the whole reason they fell in love with you in the first place ... — Talib Kweli

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

You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts. — Talib Kweli

Young kids should be doing music that has shock value. They'll grow out of it. — Talib Kweli

I think that I am seeing the Internet and seeing technology take and seeing how the work I do through music directly affects people's lives better than any politician I've ever met. — Talib Kweli

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

You'll be fooled if you only get your hip-hop from the mainstream, you know. The things that move people are not just found in the mainstream cultures. And when we talk about hip-hop in general, hip-hop's basically preoccupied with life. — Talib Kweli

But Rawkus is integral to what I do, because the cats who started Rawkus are the first ones who really saw my vision, and gave me a platform to get it out there, so I'm definitely totally grateful for that. — Talib Kweli

Hip-hop isn't as complex as a woman is. — Talib Kweli

Being called a conscious rapper is quite a compliment. It's a great thing to be. But as an artist, my nature is to not be in a box. — Talib Kweli

I tour whether I have album out or not. I tour more than any other hip-hop artist. — Talib Kweli

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

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

I'd like to work with Outkast, I'd like to work with RZA, I'd like to work with Timbaland, York, a whole bunch of people. — Talib Kweli

This goes out to freedom fighters, graffiti writers, innocent lifers, grassroots organizers — Talib Kweli

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

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

Please, this is no disrespect to whoever your man is though. This relationship is strictly musical like D'Angelo — Talib Kweli

I don't feel comfortable making empty music. — Talib Kweli

I feel like your city - with hip hop in particular, because we're always beating our chest and shouting where we're from - your city is just as influential as your parents. Even the grimy, hardcore gangster rap from New York - KRS-One and Wu Tang, the stuff acknowledges it. — Talib Kweli

When I met you it was magic ...
We polar opposites, but attracted like we was magnets. — Talib Kweli

God gave us music, so we play with our words. — Talib Kweli

The problem with our role is Americans live in a world of illusion. — Talib Kweli

My fans like to be romantic. I feel like I'm creating at least at the same level or even a higher level of creativity than I was at twenty-one. I've gotten better as an artist. — Talib Kweli

Hip hop is at its essence a folk music, because it speaks the language that people are still speaking at ground zero, it speaks the language that people speak on the streets. — Talib Kweli

The responsibility of an artist is to be honest with themselves. — Talib Kweli

I think hip hop is a dance music that's rebellious by nature. — Talib Kweli

The way I see it, if people truly love my music, they will support me in some way down the road. — Talib Kweli

If you go to a college campus and you do stop and frisk, you're going to find a lot of drugs there too. — Talib Kweli

Fortunately, artists can live off their works, if you're creative at how you do it. If you just depend on the videos and the radio, you're at a loss. — Talib Kweli

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

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

When you shine bright, some won't enjoy the shadow you cast. — Talib Kweli

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. — Talib Kweli

I think people are into me because of my music choices and my musicality. — Talib Kweli

Truthfully I wanna rhyme like common senseNext best thing I do a record with common sense — Talib Kweli

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

I feel like I have way more resources, way more experience. I'm better. But my fans romanticize the earlier stuff, and I don't think it's just like a nostalgia thing of "He's not as good" - I think it's because that earlier stuff was aggressively marketed as a lifestyle to them. — Talib Kweli

Jazz is the greatest American art form and our greatest export. We don't pay attention to the youth of jazz, don't stoke the fires creatively for the youth coming up. I feel like jazz musicians became too much of purists - with Donald Byrd doing funk jazz in the '70s. — Talib Kweli

But you have to be creative on how you sell yourself and market yourself. — Talib Kweli

We commute to computers;
Spirits stay mute while you eagles spread rumors.
We survivalists, turned to consumers ... — Talib Kweli

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

We get high on all types of drugs when, all you really need is Love — Talib Kweli

I'm spinning records and I look across the restaurant and I see somebody who looks Asian. And I'm like, "Yo, that looks like Yoko Ono." I'm like, oh, I can just meet - that's going to be great. Then I look carefully and I'm like, "That's not Yoko Ono, that's Bruno Mars." And it was Bruno Mars. That just happened recently. I was bugging out. Because that was totally not Yoko Ono at all. — Talib Kweli

I have enough rhythm to blend at this point. I have enough rhythm to blend one song into another. But man, I have such respect for the art of deejaying. I hesitate to even call myself a deejay. — Talib Kweli

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

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

Everybody could write, deejay, rap. Everybody could do it all. — Talib Kweli

Hi-Tek is on three or four songs on the new record. — Talib Kweli

You know, 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

I was always rhyming and doing it for the love before I found out I was gonna have children and when I found out, doing it for the love wasn't enough. — Talib Kweli

Love is blind, you just see bright light — Talib Kweli