Jay-Z Quotes

I wrote my first song, 'Conversion', to this little hip-hop instrumental. I went to an open-mic, plugged my iPod into the P.A., and sang over the beat.

We'll never change the fact that we are hardcore hip-hop and we make rebellious hip-hop music, and we're going to keep doing that and progress with our production, progress with our lyrical styles, be creative, and just have fun with it.

I think hip-hop is really fun right now... and that's why people are using dance beats and singing more.

A lot of the hip hop artists don't write music. They write words.

I like rap. I like anything with soul. I like anything you can feel, anything that makes you think that the artist had to make that song, or they were going to go crazy.

Nas is an artist who writes from his heart.

I knew that it's typical for a black kid to say, 'I'm just going to rap.' I was like, 'I'm going to rap, but I'm going to study, I'm going to figure out what this is and how to put it together.'

I feel like rap fit me better. I could hoop. I could have went and did that, but this is my lifestyle, my temperament, my mentality.

My favorite Eminem song is probably 'Lose Yourself' because I can relate to it a lot. That's how I feel every time I write a rhyme.

Rap - it's a childhood passion. Writing rhymes, it's something that I was doing before rap records even existed. And I will continue to write until I can't write anymore.

I wanted to rap, but I needed beats. I couldn't buy any, so I just made my own.

I'm not Tupac or this prophetic dude or anything like that. I just want to make music and have fun.

I started by producing, and the rapping came second to that, because I wanted to fill out the beat.

Most people when they rap usually have their homies in the studio who rap with 'em, but they homies don't usually be producers.

My goal for the rap game is just to make a lot of really dope music. That's really where I keep my mindset at: Just being obsessed over making something crazy and new every day.

When I made Illmatic, I was trying to make the perfect album. It comes from the days of Wild Style. I was trying to make you experience my life. I wanted you to look at hip-hop differently. I wanted you to feel that hip-hop was changing and becoming something more real.

If you're really a rapper, you can't stop rapping.

Rappers tend to use words sometimes that just rhyme and don't really mean nothing.

Everyone has the notion that hip-hop is messy and loose, but there's also another level to it.

I've always been rapping before I was making money off of it. Before I made a profit, I had always been rapping.

I feel like I changed hip-hop.

Hip-hop is an instant gratification, winners and losers circle, and often those who are losing give up after three or four, five years.

That's what hip-hop is: It's sociology and English put to a beat, you know.

I got into DJing and making beats when I was about 17. I was always fascinated by the four elements of hip-hop: you know, writing, rhyming, breakdancing and graffiti.

There's nothing I'd rather do than sort of, you know, sit at my computer and rhyme.