Jay Electronica Quotes

Hip-hop don't have no fresh energy, none at all. It's money driven, everybody tryin' to make that cheque, nobody putting art in their albums any more.

If you're a conscious rap artist and you're worried about Billboard charts, you're gonna have a problem.

I've never personally criticized anyone else's music, but I know that the public's real problem is not the music I make but the perception that I play simple music for money only and for the notoriety and to increase my popularity.

Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.

I'm just not interested in selling out to get on the charts and make people happy.

Popular music has always had its really horrendous stuff.

The biggest difference between me and other artists out there is that they'll put anything out to sell a record or sell a ticket.

I'm not proud of the lyrics to 'Shake It Up.'

If a musician is making a mediocre, self-indulgent body of work, they have to know that, for the most part, people aren't going to be interested.

I just could not believe that 30 years later we're still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that's a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.

The world is so caught up in the 'American Idol' idealistic sort of tendency in regards to just thinking that this whole thing is what everybody wants, but it doesn't help you make a better record.

Hip Hop has become real constrained. The creative juices and creative flows have been diminished.

Dealing with those personalities and the people who run this music thing has been most challenging. It's hard to really communicate things to people who run a business yet forget the nature of the business. They only look at the bottom line and the financial return, you know, they forget what it is they're packaging. It's art.

And it's one reason why I don't go to a lot of movies - they're more and more dominated by corporate values and fiscal concerns as opposed to cinematic concerns.

I love hip hop, and I have a bunch of urban songs I write for fun that I can't put on my albums because people would laugh and point.

I liked 'Rumours,' but to me, there was some point where the focus became the sales, not the music.

Hip-hop from the beginning has always been aspirational. It always broke that notion that an artist can't think about money as well. Just so long as you separate the two and you're not making music with business in mind. At some point, it has to be real when they touch it, when they listen to it. Something has to resonate with them that's real.

I love making music, but I also love making music that's on the radio. In some circles, that is considered less artistic. And I've always tried to resist those people that say the two can't exist at the same time.

Some musicians don't have strong opinions, or they deliberately don't have strong opinions because they want to try and sell as many records as possible.

I don't think you're selling out by allowing the masses to love your art. The only curse is that, when you get so big, sometimes people forget to look at the music.

I know how to make a record that commercial radio or Triple J will smash now... It's kind of hard to stay true and write what you would write if you didn't have that in your head. Because I know I can get way more airplay and get this much bigger... and that's what I'm trying to avoid doing. Trying to avoid the poisons of success.

I have been skeptical, sometimes, about the importance of rap music, which I think is a capitalistic project to make money.

I don't make music for the radio. And when I was being played on the radio a lot, I didn't.

Hip-Hop went from selling crack to smoking it