Talib Kweli Quotes

Something just happens when you're making a record, where certain things start to come out. It's just something in the air.

There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need.

Making art is a lot about just seeing what happens if you put some energy into something.

Creativity is an energy. It's a precious energy, and it's something to be protected. A lot of people take for granted that they're a creative person, but I know from experience, feeling it in myself, it is a magic; it is an energy. And it can't be taken for granted.

It's not hard to create a song, but to write a song that's really going affect somebody? That takes a hell of a lot of time.

I just let the emotion dictate what the arrangement is.

A show is like it's own thing... it's a creation from so many people's talent and so much energy.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm just taking the music that comes to me and trying to make it as beautiful as I can. You can't really predict or control how people will receive that music.

The way I build stuff in my mind, it's sort of like a puzzle for me. I always talk about it like, when I'm writing a scene there's a certain feeling I'm trying to create. I'll have my list of scenes and it's more like feelings, these notes I want to hit.

I like leaving a space hollowed out, where as I change I can inject new meaning in the shell of the songs all of the time. Where anyone who listens can hopefully inhabit them in their own way.

I feel music-making is more like a psychological game; each film has its own colour that needs to be identified and addressed.

I want the poem to be an experience - for both the listener and for myself.

Being in a studio is quite a creative and energetic process.

I always try to take performances as an opportunity to implant my spirit into the hearts and minds of anyone in a hundred-yard vicinity.

I love to musicalize things. You do employ a whole level of gravity. You use the emotional heft of music.

My new album that I'm creating, which is finished pretty much, was written with this new instinctual energy that I've developed getting to know my fans. They protect me, so now it's my destiny to protect them.

I don't really analyze my stuff when I write. I write about stuff that I'm interested in, that I'm feeling at that particular time. When I stand back and look at the complete work, I might see themes that run through the whole film, but I'm not really conscious of it when I'm doing it.

My goal is to connect with people emotionally. I take life’s experiences and translate them into music — music that hopefully creates an impact on the listener.

You spend so many months and years in the studio, and you see the clock ticking and so much time spent on the minutiae of technical things. And I just thought it'd be fun to do something extremely fast and get that rush of something that had some energy, something that you weren't tired of when you finished it.

Some of the best records are the ones that really affect you the most - they're pure emotion and energy, and it's like you're in that person's brain. It's pretty cool.

The artist's job? To be a miracle worker: make the blind see, the dull feel, the dead to live.

I never sing a song more than twice because my fear of waning excitement for a piece is part of my troubles. I so rely on vibe, energy and emotions that the technical part occurs to me last.

There's something immediate about the experience of reading a poem - whether it's the music or some other element of it - that just seems to access another part of the brain. You know, Charles Olson talks about this transfer of energy that happens between the writer and the reader of the poem. I guess there's something essential to me about acknowledging upfront the immensity of it - the difficulty of it - and even allowing that to be the subject.

Those of us who make films try to make something that we're feeling and that we would like. Then we just hope an audience responds the same way. It's very important to have the electrical circuit made, but I don't have control over how people feel when they flip the switch. So the whole idea of marketing research and test screenings is just foreign to me.

In many ways my paintings are about energy — both in how they are created and the image itself.