Gza Quotes

I'm just disillusioned with the hip-hop sound right now. It's too materialistic. You know, I'm the kind of guy ... I can't do that. If you track my movement, you'll never see a picture of me with any girl that wasn't mine, or my own car. My jewelry, my clothes. What kind of gangsta rapper has a stylist? A stylist?!

Fashion is fun, ridiculously fun. But it's base and it's wrong. You're not doing anything good for the world. You're just saying, 'Buy it, buy it, buy it.'

Instead of asking what's wrong with rampant consumerism, we ought to be asking, 'What justifies it?' Popular art does not have to pander to the lowest level of intelligence and taste.

You don't have to carry a designer bag that costs more than a car to look cool.

It's all very well setting up your own brand of face cream or exercise wear - but Christ, it's so shallow.

There are signs, I think, that people aren't satisfied by consumerism: that people resent the fact that the most moral decision in their lives is choosing what colour their next car will be.

I don't dislike rappers or hip-hop or people who like it. I went to the Def Jam tour in Manchester in the '80s when rap was inspirational. Public Enemy were awesome. But it's all about status and bling now, and it doesn't say anything to me.

With so much to be aware of, awareness bracelets have reverted to signifying nothing more than color itself. Idealism has devolved into fashion.

The way you dress or the car you drive or what you spend is to impress other people with how, I guess, successful and rich you are. But you're not, and you shouldn't, and who gives a damn what other people think anyway. So, that mentality, I think, is very destructive.

I think religion is a bunch of hooey, and I think that the holidays are an opportunity for people to get stressed out, getting their rush to shop. It's so conformist.

When I think of Italy now, I think of accessories, possessions, bad TV, fake boobs, BMWs.

Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.

I don't like LA. The majority just seem to be so artificial. Look at how they worship everything they think is fashionable. Isn't it sick?

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think viewers are hungry for shows in which people say something meaningful.

Well, we're living in a material world, and I'm a material girl... or boy.

I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.

This is the age of insincerity. The movies had the misfortune to come along in the twentieth century, and because they appeal to the masses there can be no sincerity in them.

At root fame is a sham. I'm not going to live forever and if I am I certainly need don't you to tell me that so that I will buy a car or a box of dried up crackers.

If you look at most mainstream filmmaking, to be honest, some of these films aren't even asking questions anymore at all.

It's sad to me that the main stage of history is a story of how we became this visually obsessed, extremely narcissistic, extremely concerned about image, culture. At least in the West.

All the other rappers around me aren't saying anything worthwhile. They're lost in rap: all they do is tell you they're a sick MC and they're better than you. I don't want to look like all these other little punk, dress-up, fake, manufactured artists. I'm not a rapper. I'm an activist.

I hate to say it - it breaks my heart - but we're a tacky, money-obsessed culture.

As I get older, I'm looking more and more for films that are actually about something rather than just narrative vehicles.

When I'm in the studio with other rappers, we talk about social issues.

There's this concept in urban music and lifestyle that money is everything, and I'm just not with it. If it makes money, it doesn't make it good. If it's good, it's good.