#us

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. ↗

— Jay-Z

#cool #done #exchange #i #like

Racism is taught in the home. We agree on that? Well, it's very hard to teach racism to a teenager who's listening to rap music and who idolizes, say, Snoop Dogg. It's hard to say, 'That guy is less than you.' The kid is like, 'I like that guy, he's cool. How is he less than me? ↗

— Jay-Z

#cool #guy #hard #home #how

Do not make best friends with a melancholy sad soul. They always are heavily loaded, and you must bear half. ↗

— Francois Fenelon

#bear #best #friends #half #heavily

My thing is related to who I am as a person. The clothes are an extension of me. The music is an extension of me. All my businesses are part of the culture, so I have to stay true to whatever I'm feeling at the time, whatever direction I'm heading in. And hopefully, everyone follows. ↗

— Jay-Z

#businesses #clothes #culture #direction #everyone

That's why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club. People are intermingling, hanging out, having fun, enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It's worldwide. Everywhere you go, people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that. ↗

— Jay-Z

#anymore #bronx #club #done #enjoying

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. ↗

— Jay-Z

#attaining #big #big enough #drawn #enough

I think relationships are broken up because of the media. ↗

— Jay-Z

#broken #i #i think #media #relationships

One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank, they don't like to think of themselves as poor. ↗

— Jay-Z

#american #bank #because #country #deep

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. ↗

— Jay-Z

#anything #being #burden #day #embarrassed

By the time I got to record my first album, I was 26, I didn't need pen or paper - my memory had been trained just to listen to a song, think of the words, and lay them to tape. ↗

— Jay-Z

#been #by the time #first #got #had