There is no line of demarcation between the amateurs and the pros; everyone is using the same tactics and playing in the same arenas. The only thing that separates them is radio, but the artist doesn't control who goes to radio and who doesn't.
The murder rate in Chicago is skyrocketing, and you see who's doing it and perpetrating it - they all look like Chief Keef. When it comes to the point that, you know, that kids who are doing the killings, and they're kids 13 to 19 years old, and you can replicate that in New Orleans, you can replicate that in Oakland. All the kids look the same.
Sand camouflage army men CCF sponsorin, world conquerin, telephone monitorin Louis Vuitton modelin, pornographic actress honorin String theory ponderin, bullimic vomitin Catholic priest fondlin, pre-emptive bombin and Osama and no bombin them They breakin in my car again, deforestation and overloggin and Hennessy and Hypnotic swallowin, hydroponic coughin and All the world's ills, sittin on chrome 24-inch wheels, like that
It's a massive undertaking putting an album together... It's not light weight at all.
That should be the measure of success for everyone. It's not money, it's not fame, it's not celebrity; my index of success is happiness.
I want to make music as good as Radiohead, as good as Coldplay. I can make hip-hop as good as anybody.
The point of Islam is to promote peace.
Fear is such a weak emotion that’s why I despise it
When I write, it's intimate. I write in the car, and I don't even hear, like, ambulances driving past me because I'm in my car, listening to the music, writing. I record in an attic with no booth. It's not like I'm in the dark with candles, but it's like a house, a home, and I record like that. I think that plays into the music.
For me, I walk a line of fame and infamy. I walk the line of celebrity and non-celebrity.
What starts in clouded minds finishes in the rain
It's a funny line when you're walking - the creativity, the subjectivity versus the objectivity, creativity versus the business, and recognizing that you are in the music business, so there are certain things that you have to acquiesce to on the business side and certain creative decisions that you have to make for the purposes of serving the business side of it.
I'm a big fan of science fiction, animation, and things of that nature. Other worlds and that type of stuff.
Most things that are politically right are morally wrong
If you feel comfortable, and you feel happy, and successful at your job, then that's success. You define that as success, then that's success. Success is not a general thing. It's a personal thing. It's a personal attribute.
If they burn a book, have no worries. The book will feel NO pain so neither should you! True destruction of the Qur'an cannot be done with fire; it is destroyed when we fail to remember & practice its lessons in our daily lives. If this occurs, then it is ANOTHER fire that you should truly be concerned about!
How can land be owned by another man. Warns one can not steal what was given as a gift. Is the sky owned by birds and the rivers owned by fish.
You know, my goal, once I leave the music business, is like, 'Man, Lupe didn't lead us astray.' It comes directly from Islam: leading people astray is the worst thing you could do. Especially in perpetuity; like, your music continues to go on and live without you. That risk is too great for me; I'm gonna keep it positive.
I trust people to be human. Sometimes you do things that make amazing amounts of sense; sometimes you do things that don't make any sense whatsoever.
I can strip down basic principles of certain things and apply it to everything else. And that keeps you interested, changing the art form, making it more avant-garde. Because I can't play any instruments.
I love jazz. So to me, there are two main types of jazz. There's dancing jazz, and then there's listening jazz. Listening jazz is like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane, where it's a listening experience. So that's what I like; I like to make stuff that you listen to. It's not really meant to get you up; it's meant to get your mind focused. That's why you sit and listen to jazz. You dance to big band or whatever, but for the most part, you sit and listen to jazz. I think it comes from that aesthetic, trying to take that jazz listening experience and put it on hip-hop.
I don't really care about the GOPs or the Democratic Party. My point is the people, giving the people truth.
Just take me home where the mood is mellow And the roses are grown M&M's are yellow And the light bulbs around my mirror don't flicker Everybody gets a nice autograph picture One for you and one for your sister Who had to work tonight but is an avid listener Every song's a favorite song And mics don't feed back.
Just listening to Pac, ain't gon' make it stop A rebel in your thoughts, ain't gon' make it halt If you don't become an actor, you'll never be a factor
My problem is I’m peaceful, and I believe in the people.
We weren't raised Muslim - we were born Muslim. I didn't go to a Muslim school, but it was just the theme song. It was ambient.
Every life is good. This [luxury] doesn't make life. It's a lifestyle. It's a style of life. Style is what you are, but everybody has life. And everybody's life should be good. Some of the happiest people in the world have nothing. Nothing. And they find happiness in being in the world. They wear the world with a smile.
America is not all white people. It's not all black people. It's not all Mexican people. We together, and we all relate on certain levels, so if you actually scaring people away, they can't relate to what you're saying.
The truth is limitless in its range, if you drop the T and look at it in reverse it could hurt.
My mother and my father taught me to look at the actual problem, not the face of it, not the veneer of it. So for me, I was never - I was impressed that it - racially, I was impressed, right, but now in America it's about economics, and it's been about economics, and honestly, everything's been about economics since I don't want to say the beginning of time, but it's been about economics for a long while.
With Australian audiences, there's a certain level of education - as far as how much access and exposure they have to music from various genres. So when you do 'Big Day Out' and there are all these different musical acts, you see the same people in your crowd that were there for a completely different artist.
You would never know if you could ever be, If you never try, you would never see.
We on the internet. That's such a small community. We think we're so huge. If you went up to people on the street and asked them about it, they'd probably be like, "You had a album coming out?" Let alone it leaked.
Making your moves, paying your dues, chasing the cool.
The rewards we get by being those weird guys going against the grain to me are way more massive than selling a million billion records. I like climbing mountains or going on undersea dives for whales and stuff like that.
I don't like to degrade women, but I like pornography.
When I started making my own music, I was more about recreating what I was hearing. I noticed that I had some control over what I was saying, and the effects that it's going to have on people. I wanted to focus more on the positive side of things, which are more in tune with my morals and ethics.
360 deals are the new things of the industry. It's not about selling records; it's about selling T-shirts, getting a piece of your publishing, getting a piece of your touring, and all these other kind of properties.
To me, you can't win. You can't win. There's a war in Iraq; there's no way that they're ending that. The war in Afghanistan is still going on. There's no way that's going to end anytime soon. You can complain about it, you can throw rocks at it, but you really have to come to the conclusion that this is a really twisted place sometimes and some stuff you're not going to win.
People see your reviews sometimes, and it's so good that they think I wrote it. And I'm like, "OK, yeah, I wrote it. And I own the company that put it out."
They say the streets is a demon in a dress, Wit dollar signs in her eyes and semen on her breath
Just be yourself and one day you will find someone who loves you for everything you are, flaws or no flaws.
What I've learned is not to take anybody's advice. If you rely solely on your fans, it sets you up for the downfall on the industry side and if you rely on what your label is saying, it will disconnect you from your fans.
People are hypocritical. That's just human nature. I embrace my hypocrisy. Once you come to grips with who you are and what's in you, and you aren't ashamed of it...but people are made to feel ashamed. You start thinking, like, "Is this human nature? That I like certain things, but I don't like certain aspects of certain things? Should I just shun it altogether?"
The only person who really impressed me with making new music is Cudi. Everyone else seems to be jumping on the same music, the producer-made stuff, but the one person that's made new music to me is Cudi.
You know what I had a problem with? The war - the war in Afghanistan.
With 'Hip-Hop Saved My Life,' I attempted to make 'Kick, Push,' but for rappers. To give a real basic play-by-play of the life of a rapper before he makes it - if he ever makes it, because you can get stuck in that and be trying to make it for the rest of your life.
In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America. For me, I'm trying to fight the terrorism that's actually causing the other forms of terrorism. The root cause of the terrorism is the stuff that you as a government allow to happen and the foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it's easy for us because it's really just some oil, which we can really get on our own.
I saw the dudes who would be the gangsta, big-time guys on the block, but would also be dedicated fathers. It was kind of weird to see that dual story that everybody has.
In Chicago, you have an absence of strong family units, and that absence gets filled by gangs. You have a failure in the school system, after-school programs and other social programs to help keep kids off the streets. Amnesty International speaks to that in some way, by keeping these issues in the forefront.
All the big revolutions, whether it's the Industrial Revolution, the Arab Spring, those changes happened by economic and social shifts brought about by the people's voices, and those things weren't voted for. Most of our changes today are brought about through technology, not by voting.
I think there's a lot of the hip-hop crowd behind Barack Obama because he's a black man. Honestly, I'm rooting for Hillary because race is only going to go so far. All the presidents are men at the end of the day.
Success is a very dangerous thing and I think we have to be very careful about when we dictate what success is for somebody else. Because you don't know what it's like.
I don't think that politics are as complex as people like to make them seem or out to be.
My greatest enemy at one point was myself, and so now once I got over the fear of myself I don't fear any man. I never have.
Nature only goes so far. Nurture, what you raised on and what you ingest as a youngster, it really affects you when you grow up in really subtle, long drawn-out ways. And to find that, to hear that thing again all those years later and to realize that was the source, it's like, "What else has me twisted?" So now I'm going back to robots and cartoons; I go back to all this to see what got me the way that I am.
Hip-hop is just something I actually know how to do. But I always had aspirations to participate in other forms of music.
The world brought me to my knees, what have you brung you?
The economical policies that are instigated really makes you think that the American government is a bunch of evil bastards. So just because you're black, you're still representing that government, and when Obama came into office he enacted the same policies that we would critique other presidents for.
I have people who want to pull me into specific projects in the community based on my music and on the mixtapes. It's like, it's the truth but I'm not trying to preach to you. Because who am I to say what's really right or wrong, or whether what I say is going to change anything? I don't take it too seriously; it's really whimsical.
I got into skateboarding when I was like a shorty. It was a toy thing.
You have educate the masses to exactly what their tax dollars are going to pay for. I think once people educate themselves and open up their minds to understand that on that really basic level, then you'll have some type of change in the way that Americans associate themselves and participate in their own political process.
Some stuff I don't even put out. I'll just be home, happy, creating something for myself, and then ball it up and throw it in the trash. It's less about trying to prove something or get on somebody's list or make a fan happy or make a hater mad or convert a non-believer. That's not the case for me anymore.
I'm just trying to do the opposite of left, as long as there's the opposite of death, ya know Yes, ya test and I just might bring the opposite of life, til' there's no one the opposite of right
If you're informed, you make an informed choice. You understand the quality of certain things and you understand the history of certain things.
I think that all the silence is worse than all the violence, Fear is such a weak emotion that's why I despise it, We scared of almost everything, afraid to even tell the truth, So scared of what you think of me, I'm scared of even telling you...
Why kill you when I can just not teach you and get the same results?
China is soon to be probably the most powerful nation in the world, but they only making like $10,000 a year, and that's doing it. They're balling on $10,000 a year, and this is the strongest nation? But it's a billion people. The way it breaks down, if you really look at it, it's still built on the poor, on the backs of hundreds of millions of destitute, impoverished farmers that you'll never see. You just see Shanghai and you see Hong Kong.
I think that all the silence is worse than all the violence
I love her (Lucifer), with all my heart. She said that she would give me greatness, status, placement above the others.
Reggae, oh man. It's the ultimate music. The positivity. The musicality. The whole cultural expressionism of it. The danceability. Just the cool factor. The melody factor. Some of it comes from a religious place. If there were a competition of who makes the best religious music, it would definitely be the Rastafarian reggae.
Some people are the greatest people on Earth with good hearts and will get in the studio and make the most negative music in the world for the sake of success. That's what the music business does to you. That's what capitalism does to you.
Know the weapons of the weak, kill weakness of the heart and never fall asleep.
Takes a long time to happen so fast... To realize that your future is somebody else's past
The biggest terrorist is Obama.
There's already been black presidents who've been corrupt, so it doesn't strike me that having a black man in office means he's going to be the Messiah.
I was literally told for 'The Show Goes On' that I shouldn't rap too deep. I shouldn't be too lyrical. It just needs to be something easy on the eyes. Like a record company telling Picasso that we don't need these abstract interpretations of life, where people have to sit down and look at it and break it down.
I know what tablas sound like, because my father played a lot of Ustad Ali Akbar Khan.
I really embrace my hypocrisy. I embrace that because after I do that, I can move on; I can try and go away from that. You gotta understand what your problem is and know what it is, and then you can change it. You can't just be like, "I'm a hypocrite, and to not be a hypocrite, I'm just going to not do hypocritical things." You can't do that; you don't even understand what a hypocrite is.
People don't understand that where I come from, everyone is either a convict, been in jail, been in a gang, is a hooligan of some sorts, but those are my brothers, my family and the people that I travel with. Those are the people that I roll with.
There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.
If you are what you say you are A superstar Then have no fear The camera's is here and the microphones and they wanna know Oh oh oh oh yeah If you are what you say you are Then have no fear
I think that American presidents, that position in itself, as well as American foreign policy, it has terrorism in it. CIA agents going to overthrow certain governments - they're using terrorist tactics. They're not going in there like, 'Hey, you wanna have some cake?'
I love her (Lucifer), with all my heart. She said that she would give me greatness, status, placement above the others. A match made in heaven, set the fires in hell. The devil on me. Game got my soul. Momma said beware of what the devil do. Tell'em that your soul's not for sale. Every dream is designed and broadcasted from the masters to the masses.
When you understand that your tax dollars pay for those tear gas canisters that were being fired into the crowd, and when you see that, and to know that a little bit of your fingerprint, your American DNA is a part of that, as well as those stealth bombers and that bomb that's lodged in the side of the school that has "Made in USA" on it in Gaza, and all of the unmanned drones that are blowing up weddings and things of that nature, to know that you pay for that, you really have - you don't have to do it now, but you need to think about that.
I was once that little boy Terrified of the world, now I'm on a world tour
I look at people like Picasso and Da Vinci and Escher and Miles Davis, and they'll write or paint that one definitive masterpiece of maybe 50 that they have that's really trying to go outside the box, trying to do something that's tough. And then when you accomplish it, you look back and go, 'Yeeaaaah - masterpiece.'
For me, I never wore my religion on my sleeve, you know what I'm saying? I never put myself out there as Lupe Fiasco, he's Muslim, he's from Chicago, he likes to ride a skateboard.
I'm not in competition with nobody. I want to make good music for my fans who want it, who enjoy it, who learn something from it. And that's what it is.
People have their morals, but morals aren't concrete. People think because I'm a Muslim that I pray five times a day, but you're never going to see that on a day-to-day basis. People fluctuate. To me, that was the most specific way to put it, the best way to be like, "I listen to this music, but it's the most violent music on the planet." But I like it, and to make up for it, I don't say the cuss words. That's how I get away with it.
The biggest budget is the military budget. For what? We're fighting two wars in very small countries that have no nuclear weapons, that have no capabilities to destroy anything. They probably couldn't even get to America.
It feels good, you know. It feels like you're out there, you know, doin' your own thing, know what I'm sayin'? It's like, people can't really compare it to anything, and that kinda feels good. It opens me up to a lot of different arenas, a lot of different type of situations, you know like Tony Hawk will call. You know what I'm sayin'? I can just image if my songs was about shootin' up, and like sellin' cocaine, I doubt Tony Hawk would be callin' you know?
I think you have to ask yourself does voting work on the level that you are trying to effectuate change; that is the conversation you must have.
Barack is at a level where he can't - no matter how much he wants to or how much we want him to - he's not going to come take out our garbage, so to speak. He can't be the garbage man and the president. He can't be the mayor and the alderman. He can't fill all those roles. So I always push for local, local activity on the political scene.
If you're going to fight terrorism, to me, you fight the root causes of terrorism.
We have to make the physical music a little more valuable instead of just having a download link and a bunch of songs you downloaded from some torrent site. People try to make the music value-less, and I don't think we're going to stop that train, but the one thing that they can't devalue are things that are in the outside world.
I hope that God forgive us, all of us sinners turn us back into beginners, put us up where the winners go, Holy apartments in the gardens in which the rivers flow, thank you for all your blessings and all of your miracles.
When you look out into the world and you turn on the news and it's just so dark, it's still there. But it's the battle, it's the struggle with that, and at the same time to recognize that happiness and love and all those things exist as well.
Everybody has their opinion on what's 'real,' and what's they choose to listen to and their personal preference. Whether they're 2 years old or 200 years old. And people can listen to whatever they want.
Sometimes I wish I never found the Internet. Sometimes I regret getting a laptop and Wi-Fi for logging into the Internet because it is such a distraction. If you have any addictive personality, the Internet will magnify it.
I have a lot of fans in the Tea Party, and they disagree with me vehemently. But they're fans, so we meet and connect and talk, so I'm open to everything.
It's really about taking something inherently negative, and starting with the word loser, starting with something that's negative, and changing it into something that's positive, redefining it, but doing it in a certain way, how - like I would say when I look out at the world and you see it's dark and it's just overbearing and every day is depressed, depressed, depressed. What it took was to change my perspective a little bit. Not to change the world, to change my perspective.
My approach is I put God first; I say "God willing" all the time. The only way things will change is with God. So knowing that I can't really change anything, I'm just going to satire it.
I always say that you define what success is to yourself.
I do this for the sake of myself. It's a selfish process. I don't really have any expectations from anyone for your comments or your reviews or your previews.
Oh yeah, I'm literally walking through my house now looking down and there are maybe, like, 15 pairs on the floor. For real. Real talk. It's just simplicity. They're something I wear every day. Before I got a deal with them, I was wearing some type of Vans all the time. I would just order them by the box, like, 10 at a time.
In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama, and the United States of America.
You ain't got to change the whole world. You just alter it a little bit and you redefine it into something beautiful.
The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.
First of all, you are not really that supreme.
I can't play any instrument for the life of me, but I know what I want to hear.
When you start creating opinion, and you start creating difference of opinion, you're doing something. People are actually sitting down and critiquing. A lot of the stuff people hate, they really don't. They only look at the outer shell. They don't really get into it.
Obama came in and gave $700 billion to the bankers off the top as opposed to giving $700 billion to the poor.
World is not designed for you to win; it's designed to be played. It's designed for you to play your position until a certain point, when you get a chance to actually do some good, make a statement, get on your soapbox and say something.
I don't like to hear myself sing. So to get comfortable hearing myself sing, I sang in another accent.
A match made in heaven set the fires in hell.
The men can have a moral compass that is just unshakeable, they can have ethics that run to the core.
You always wrestle with depression, you always wrestle with those things, because the events and the experiences are still there, and the things that take place are still happening.
Before my father would open up a karate school in a particular neighborhood, he'd clean up the block - kick all the drug dealers and gang bangers off the block. My father was very clear: 'I've got guns too, and I'll kill you just as much as a rival gang would.' And he meant it. He was a man of many facets and complexities.
I went from MC to being MS, this microphone controller is the motivational speaker.
The stuff that I make and the things that I talk about, you have to listen, so if the beat is doing too much, it's going to take you away. If the hook is too distracting, it's going to take you away. The hook just needs to be enough to get you from one verse to the next.
Faced with the way the system does you in the 'hood sometimes, if you don't literally get out, your chances are slim. You'll definitely die mentally. You'll pretty much die physically.
Your child’s future was the first to go with budget cuts.
This nation was founded by rebels and revolutionaries, and its flags were carried across the battlefields by people who were very, very against the status quo and who questioned and criticized.
You need to think about the system that you live in and the comforts that you have. But the comforts that you have that are causing the discomforts of a massive amount of people around the world.
