Talib Kweli Quotes

There was the best teachers from the Czech Philharmonic, highly dedicated people, some of the best musicians in the world passing on the knowledge about the country, about the principles, and about the music.

I'd like to see people pay attention to the science of hip hop. The knowledge part, the political side of what hip hop could do, or where hip hop is gonna go. I always say it's gonna become universal as we become a galactic union.

Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he's also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes.

I am playing the violin, that's all I know, nothing else, no education, no nothing. You just practice every day.

Music - that's been my education. There's not a day that goes by that I take it for granted.

People underestimate the hip-hop audience and the capacity to understand politics when it's part of music.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

I grew up singing. My mother was a music teacher.

When I rap, I get to express myself in a way where putting words together is like poetry, and sometimes it's better to talk in certain expressions than sing, you know? So I love, I love to rhyme when I want to express certain things.

My mom had this romantic notion of her children playing classical music. The idea is you learn it when you're still learning language. It's using the same part of the brain.

Back in the day, if someone said that hip hop and rap was a fad, that was a joke to me because they just didn't know what they were talking about. In reality, there were so many people who didn't know what they were talking about it.

It's interesting to do other people's music - that's how I learned to play, by learning other people's songs. It's nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.

For me, to turn people on to new music, on to things that are going on in the world, is important.

I wanted to be able to play guitar. I wanted to be able to make music hurt.

I'd love to be a saxophonist. I don't know why, but I pretend I'm the saxophonist when I listen to music. I have about as much chance playing the sax as I do learning how to fly.

I want kids of this generation to see that everything is cool, that there's some kind of unity in hip-hop. We all found something that's really important to us, and music is all we've really got.

Hip-hop's always reached out to kids. If you look at the last 10 big albums it might seem ironic. But when I look at the history of this music it's always had a lot of positivity.

I started studying music at the age of five and a half. My older sister was taking piano lessons. When her teacher left our apartment, I would get up on the piano bench and start picking out the notes that were part of my sister's lessons.

Music is a continual learning process. One finds new insights all the time. For me, it began at a very early age; from the beginning, there was something besides the notes.

You see, that is it with music, you never stop learning.

People can look to me as a teacher, but I consider myself a student of hip-hop.

My parents discussed singing every night over the dinner table; I had a tremendous music education.

When you go into the studio or get up on the stage with people who have more experience or knowledge, you learn.

I started off with violin, then I started learning guitar, then I went to piano. But I self-taught piano just because I enjoyed it. I've always really enjoyed music.

When I rap, it's just an extension of how I speak, and that's how I talk. If you don't like it, don't listen.