Talib Kweli Hip Quotations

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.

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

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.

I don't think that early hip hop stood out to be a social critique. A lot of fans of mine think that hip hop's ultimate responsibility is to critique social structures.

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.

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

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

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

Why give you the cure when the disease makes money?

We speak the love language, they speak from pain and anguish. Some don't love theyselves, so they perception is tainted.

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

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

If you ain't using all the talents God provided you with For the betterment of Man, understand, You ain't nothing but a waste.

Life without knowledge is death in disguise.

Nowadays rap artists coming half-hearted, Commercial like pop, or underground like black markets. Where were you the day hip-hop died? Is it too early to mourn? Is it too late to ride?

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

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

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.

What's more condescending and corny than someone telling you how much more money they have than you and telling you basically, 'I don't care about poor people,' which is a large part of what you hear of corporate hip-hop on the radio.

Hip-hop is a vehicle.

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?

By the time you get into other kinds of music - R&B, country, or whatever - it becomes something that's romantic. It becomes something unattainable. Never-ending undying love. And in hip hop, we're still taking direct inspiration.

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

Hopefully, we learn to appreciate hip-hop here so that it doesn't go the way of jazz.