Quotes By Talib Kweli

I'm not looking to set a standard... but, I believe I have offered a challenge to others with my work.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

But it becomes disrespectful when the artist's process is not respected.

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.

I don't feel comfortable making empty music.

I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.

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.

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

I think music sharing of any kind is great.

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.

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