Hip–hop gave a generation a common ground that didn’t require either race to lose anything; everyone gained. — Jay Z

I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man! — Jay Z

Hip–hop is a perfect mix between poetry and boxing. — Jay Z

A poet’s mission is to make words do more work than they normally do, to make them work on more than one level. — Jay Z

Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow. — Jay Z

We were kids without fathers . . . so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves. — Jay Z

Everyone needs a chance to evolve. — Jay Z

You know the type: loud as a motorbike but wouldn’t bust a grape in a fruit fight. — Jay Z

Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing. — Jay Z

It was drive: we toured the whole eastern seaboard…we would just drive ourselves and do a show with just 20 people in the show. — Full Video Jay

We change people through conversation, not through censorship. — Jay Z

In the end, you can’t censor the truth, especially when it comes packaged in hot music. — Jay Z

I believe you can speak things into existence. — Jay Z

Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama’s running so we all can fly. — Jay Z

This is black superhero music right here, baby! — Jay Z

I’m a hustler, baby; I sell water to a well! — Jay Z

Only God can judge me so I’m gone, either love me or leave me alone. — Jay Z

Housing projects can seem like labyrinths to outsiders, as complicated and intimidating as a Moroccan bazaar. But we knew our way around. — Jay Z

And all you other cats throwin’ shots at Jigga, | You only get half a bar: fuck y’all niggaz. — Jay Z

T]he truth is you don’t need some external demon to take control of you to turn you into a raging, money–obsessed sociopath, you only need to let loose the demons you already have inside of you. — Jay Z

If the beat is time, flow is what we do with that time, how we live through it. The beat is everywhere, but every life has to find its own flow. — Jay Z

A wise man told me don’t argue with fools. Cause people from a distance can’t tell who is who. — Jay Z

I couldn’t even think about wanting to be something else; I wouldn’t let myself visualize another life. But I wrote because I couldn’t stop. It was a release, a mental exercise, a way of keeping sane. — Jay Z

Rap has been a path between cultures in the best tradition of popular music. — Jay Z

You could name practically any problem in the hood and there’d be a rap song for you. — Jay Z

Life is for living, not living uptight, see ya somewhere up in the sky. — Jay Z

Man I’m high off life. Fuck it, I’m WASTED — Jay Z

Allow me to re–introduce myself .. I am the jabroni–beating,pie–eating,trail–blazing,eyebrow–raising. — Jay Z