Jay-Z Quotes

In a time like this, when records are not selling, he's the only one that is selling. You know, Drake and all the other ones [did well], but Em did [close to] 800,000 his first week, and he's #1 for the fifth week. It's incredible. I think he has a faithful fan base of people who have been following him for years. They're not going to stop following him and not stop listening to his music. Em said he didn't like his last album as much as this one. You can hear the difference. I like both of the albums. '3 a.m.' is one of my joints. But Eminem has followers that's gonna mess with him until the day he dies.

Slow, Deep And Hard was a great album, even though it was probably our least selling record.

I actually don't think that I'm gonna sell a lot of records.

When we were on the road, I found out that my greatest hits album went Gold. They freaked out. Things really came to a head when we started arguing about a Van Halen greatest hits package.

I want to be able to say that a rap career could be ten albums.

Actually, we got signed in November of 2000 with Dreamworks which is the most amazing label. We have friends on other labels and though we are not selling millions of records, yet, they treat us with tons of respect and give us some very good guidance.

MTV made a huge impact. Heavy rotation took you from selling 1m albums to 20m albums, and that meant a lot of dough.

But when our first album came out, I didn't think it was going to sell a lot of records.

At Spotify, we really want you to democratically win as a musician. We want you to win because your music is the best music.

Even an independent label is looking for a hit, they're not looking for a record that's not gonna do well.

The Band never really played big concert tours. We never sold millions and millions of albums.

If I have a hit, then I hope the people who like the hit song go out and buy my album so they can hear it all.

I've sold a lot of records. Did I keep other artists from eating?

I can say that my big records and my success have been due to the backing which Atlantic have put behind me.

When I started playing music, people weren't selling 5 million records. That was not the standard; that was not the focus.

Look at Macklemore! Perfect comparison, we're two artists from the same city who both had meteoric rises at different periods. I probably sold more albums, because in that era you couldn't steal them; you had to go to a record store to buy them. But Macklemore had more power.

I want to build a fanbase. I want people to like my albums even more so than singles.

We were just hoping 'Prayin' for Daylight' wasn't a complete flop. Selling a million records wasn't even in our wildest thoughts.

I think we'd sold a couple hundred records with our first album, maybe 1,000 at the most.

I have this first album that sells more than 100,000 copies in its first week, debuts at number two, goes gold, the single goes platinum, we're doing Madison Square Garden.

In Australia, our first album went four-times platinum. It was massive.

The record companies didn't want 'Stony Road,' and it ended up being a gold album. They didn't want 'Blue Guitars,' and we did 165,000 books.

From the beginning of my rap career, since I was seen and heard, I always had a store.

We strive to have new records. We strive to have new songs on the radio. That feels good that we can gain those new fans and still bring out our fans that have been with us for some of the ride or all of the ride.

It's not about what hits Billboard or how many views you got on a video. It's about copies sold. It's about streams, you know?