YouSaid · the spoken record

Jay Z

lines on the record: 36
first: 2023-08-09
most recent: 2023-08-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Sometimes we just want to be wrong. Sometimes I want to be provocative, you know, 99 problems. I want to push buttons. Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that's the... Yeah, I used to have a nightmare when I was young all the time about running away and never being able to quite get away. I don't have that dream anymore.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know it sounds like a very simple thing to do, but it's not simple to do with all the pressures to succeed and all the pressures to once you succeed, to stay there. You have a belief in yourself. And sometimes in most cases, it's a naivete about who you are and what you can contribute to the game. Wrapping my friend's story and our stories together and taking it beyond the level of this is what we did, but this is what we felt while we were doing this. And this is how it affected us. And this is why we was doing what we thought we had to do at the time. I'm trying to find that truth and trying to tap into something really important as well as have fun. Is not always like this responsibility of trying to be great every second. Sometimes I just want to be silly”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No one can tell me that two planets crashed and these things happen. It's very hard for me to believe that. I believe that everything that happens in life is there to build character, to be learned from is some type of energy returning back to you. Everything that I've based my life upon has worked out that way for the most part, but I don't know Day, my nephew passed away in the car crash. I really can't figure out that day as a young kid, like a beautiful kid, just most beautiful, respectful kid. I can't really apply that to anything I believe that things happen for a reason, but I can't apply that against anything. That's just the way of the world, and that's how it is I think the most important lesson for me would be just be true to yourself.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe that there's one God I don't knock anyone's religion because, you know, however you find God, that's a fantastic thing. But I think religion is done more to separate people than bring them together. I think the people that are reading the Quran and people that are reading the Bible are really reading about the same person. And I think we're all praying to one God. I don't know how else to explain this sunset and how if I get a cut, you know, a scab forms and how my body is like this. That reacts to movement, how my eyebrows made to keep sweat from going in my eyes and how everything works so perfectly.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what hip hop has to do is become the voice of a generation, be it a younger generation or an older generation. In order for hip-hop to survive, we have to expand the genre because hip-hop was always viewed as a young man's game. So a lot of time guys, when they became 30 years old, they still trying to make records like they're 15 because that's where the white hotspot was, you know, where you were relevant and where records sold. But now As we become a legitimate genre of music and if we're going to last to test the time, we can't be considered as a niche genre of music. It has to be a music that's centered around something, right? Something, some type of truth and some type of emotion and some type of revolution or some type of love.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's very difficult to teach racism when your kid looks up the Snoop Doggy Dog. And if you look at clubs and how integrated they had become before people partied in separate clubs. There were hip-hop clubs and there were techno clubs and now people party together. And once you have people party and dancing and singing along to the same music, then conversations naturally happen after that, right? And then within conversations that we all realize that we're more like than we're separate.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a very interesting take on the cultural impact of hip hop and it's a strong one. So I just want to prepare people for that at home. I think that hip-hop has done more for racial relations than most cultural icons. And I say save Martin Luther King because his dream speech we realized when President Obama got elected. The impact of the music. This music didn't only influence kids from urban areas. It influenced people all around the world. People listen to this music all around the world and took to this music. And racism is toward the home. I truly believe that racism is taught when you're young.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had he passed before I got a chance to have that conversation with him, who knows how it would be emotionally still? So, you know, some kind of way, some kind of way I got to have that conversation with him after 25 years or whatever. And he passed a month later. The latter part of my life, the feeling that I, when I think about him, is more free and sadness.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You don't ever want to experience that sort of pain again is the worst sort of pain. The person that you love is no longer in your life anymore. So you don't want anyone to ever get that close again. Once me and my pop, you know, before he passed away, had a conversation and I was able to tell him everything that I felt and everything that was on my mind, I was able to let that all those feelings go. Like, really, the weirdest thing. I mean, and it was so perfect how it happened, not perfect in the sense that he's not here anymore, but.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most part you learn how to be a man from your dad, right? You teach you certain things. And as a kid, your dad is your hero. There's no one stronger or tougher or meaner or whatever, stronger than your dad. My pop, you know, I have memories of him when I was a kid and all the middle pieces of my life he was missing. For me that took my entire life to resolve. It didn't take till the year he died for me to really let that go. So imagine, so from 12 years old, I was 35, 6, holding on to that anger and, you know, having to deal with that. And that affecting my relationships further, right? Because once you felt that type of pain, you don't ever want to let anyone that close.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had to be tough. But now a lot of those things like being tough and all that, the line is blurred on that. It comes with maturity and it comes with knowing who you are as a person. It's not the bravado and it's not putting on the show for anybody. It's more about knowing who you are and knowing that you don't have to react to every little thing. Because those things mostly spawn out of insecurity. You feel you have to almost like a peacock, right? Or you have to put up these things so people back away, but I don't mean that doesn't make you tough, right? You can have a tough exterior and not be the toughest guide. A lot of times that happens. But being a man of your word and having integrity and having honor and taking care of your family, still those things are in place.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Usha's Confessions album and I guess Justin's Cry Me a Rivers came out of bad relationships. I guess relationships in general inspire music, be it good or bad. My pain, your entertainment. I was outside of my mother's house and running the streets when I was 15, 16 years old. Being a man that was following up if you said you would do something, you did it having some type integrity. And at that age, being tough, you know, and not being taken advantage of because the harsh world out there.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would love to affect coach in such a way that you're remembered like that. The thing about life is just as simple as a guy walking to a wall and writing graffiti on the wall. You leave your name hairs the long after you're gone people, they're looking at your name like this guy stood for that. He meant that to us and he did this for us the same way I look to these guys. Now borrow a little bit from their fearlessness and their strength and their will. I think any relationship inspires creativity, especially when it's a great relationship. The people around you inspire you in certain ways, be it something they've done or be it something they've said. So I think any good relationship inspires you, well, sometimes bad relationships create great art. In the case of Marvin Gaye and...”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look to Muhammad Ali for one, not because he was a great champion, which he was, but because he had the strength to stand up and say I'm beautiful, I'm pretty, look at me at a time where our people were considered not beautiful and look upon as ugly and frowned upon, but he stood in that ring and said I'm beautiful, I'm the greatest. He not only said that for him, he said that for our culture and our generations, so he would have to stand to be number one. That goes beyond saying. Martin Luther King, of course, Malcolm X as well, his strength. And also Michael Jordan because of his will to win and his passion for what he did and how he gave his all to what he loved.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Growing up in radio stations and other places as if we were universal and speaking as if we sold 100 million records when we in fact sold nothing. So it feels like that time again for me because the models have to be redefined. And that's exciting to me. I don't know if you've ever done, right? It's almost like climbing a mountain and you see another mountain and you go to the next one and the next one. My goal is to have one goal album and that was it. It became more from there and all the way up until the black album then it became I want to show that Artists can ascend to the executive ranks. You know, it just kept redefining themselves, which is why I took the presidency of DevJam. It just keeps reinventing itself and redefining itself every single day.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I shot a commercial when this album came out and it was going back through times through all my album covers. And, you know, I had to recreate them. And I realized how easy it was to recreate. I had the same haircut, the same thing in every single shot. So I don't know if I've been graded reinventing myself. But as far as the company, we have the opportunity to reinvent ourself out of necessity of everything that's going on. You have to reinvent yourself. The playing field has changed. It's difficult in the music business because the internet and everything that's going on. But if you're fearless, it's a beautiful time for entrepreneurs. The most fun I had in the music business was us having this little rinky-dink record company and, you know,”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started my own record company. I wasn't signed to a major. So I was always outside of the cool club. I was in it, but I was observing it at the same time. So I've always viewed it with a certain caution.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You need someone to always keep you grounded. I have great friends around me who I don't shun their advice. I encourage their advice, which I think is very important. You can live in your own alternative universe with how people treat celebrity these days. But as long as you keep good friends around you. And also not putting yourself in the box and becoming a prisoner of your fame. A lot of people once they become famous, they stop doing things that they did. They don't go to the store. You become a prisoner of your fame. And I've always been aware and cognizance of that, not to let that allow that to happen to me. From the beginning, I always looked at myself as an outsider to the industry in a way.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My third album, I had the combination of failing with those pop records and the true and real music that I wanted to make. And I blended those two together and I made a song called Hard Knock Life. And that album was when I knew that I can do it. Can have success. We've seen that a million times. To maintain success is another thing. There's fear in being successful too. You're successful doing one thing, you tend to say, I want to stay here. I don't want to move. I don't want to take a chance to do anything else because this works. I don't know how you learn from success. I haven't figured that part out. A lot of times you're flying at 50,000 feet.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Successful as someone else. That's a very difficult thing to upkeep and it's very tiring. You know, I feel sorry for someone who has to walk out the house every day as someone else to make this art and to make something that people connect to in whatever you've made is not you. You're not happy about it, but it's successful. Just to maintain that level of success, it has to be very draining and very sad existence because at some point you have to go home. And when you go home, all the lights are off and everything's off and you have to look in the mirror and you have to look at yourself and say, man, I like who I am or I'm not very happy with who I am.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've learned more from failures than success. It can be paralyzed in some failure and the fear of it. My first time I made was an album called Reasonable Doubt, which in small circles was considered the album like a classic album, like the album for that generation in the voice of people that were going through similar situations. But it didn't sell massive numbers worldwide, right? It was still very niche. Then my second album, because of reasonable doubt and its lack of commercial success, I try to make these records that were bigger and will be more popular, which was a failure going for that success really messed up that project and set a bad tone. It was a huge learning lesson for me that if I was going to be successful, I had to be successful with myself. I couldn't be successful doing what other people were doing. I had to do what I believed in and what felt real to me and felt true to me. Because the worst thing to be is.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Flow is just becoming one with the music. You find some place inside the music that you tuck in and you don't get in the way of the groove. You insert yourself in a song as an instrument. You're just part of the track. You're no different than the horn or the snare or the bass or the hi-hat. You found a place in that track to tuck in and you just don't disturb the group where it's just smooth and it just flows. I love having that experience.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Music is music. We just all use different instruments. In hip hop, we use our voice as our main instrument, but it's all music, and every chance that I get I've tried to cross genres, whether it be making songs with Chris Martin or Lincoln Park or Lenny Kravitz or whomever. The most important thing about collaborations is you maintain a sense of yourself. You don't get in there and try to do what they do, and they try to do what you do. I think you bring the best of what you do to the table. They bring the best of what they do to the table, and it makes for some interesting music. It's cool to bring those energies together because at the end of the day, again, we're all artists. I'm really a student of music. So at the same time, I'm making this music. I'm learning of their experience and what they think and what they believe.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the time, and then those words connected with people, so maybe I've helped other people through trying times and other people who grew up without their father and other people who felt this paranoia about hustling or what they felt they had to do and everything. I'm fortunate to have a great relationship with my fans where people see me for the most part and they feel as if they know me. They grown up with my music and they've listened to what I've had to say and some of it rang really true with them and connect it to them in a way that they feel like they know me. So when I see people in the street, I see people out and about people. Most people like, hey, Jake, what's up? It's almost like a conversation between old friends. It's really cool, which is great. I couldn't ask for anything more.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the store to tell us we have to go back in the store, we wait for police to clear a path to the car. And we're going to run through the path and get in the car and pull off. And as we ran through the path, halfway through the crowd collapsed and we had to go back in and they had to open it again. And I knew then that everything had changed that moment. The power of words, everything for me, right? Music and this culture of hip hop, you know, changed the direction of my life and my family and my friends and everybody around me. It helped me to deal with my emotions and things that I was going through, found theirself in my music.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a time when I realized that I got this. I go into this record store to do a sign-in abuse in Virginia, I remember. You know, it's no big deal. There's no security. There's no big entourage just going to work. And I start signing all the graphs. And I noticed I'm signing autographs for a while. And I'm like, man, I've been here for a minute, man. How many people are here? And I try to leave the store when it was over. And there was a mob of people outside. A mob that we can get outside.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Emotion, and I knew there were small pockets of people all across the country that I spoke to directly, but I didn't have the vehicle to get to them. You know, I didn't have a record label at the time. So I tried to get a record deal, and I couldn't get a record deal. The record company would be my bridge to them. And they didn't give me that bridge. So it was a very important part of my career that we didn't give up right there, that belief in myself and belief that I had something to offer so we built our own bridge. And, you know, I started my own record company.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this very distant outside chance of being a basketball player, which was very far because I never played any organized sports, I never really played on the team. Back then, that opportunity was very limited because rap wasn't what it is today. In my small circle of friends would say these stories, right? These short stories. So it was a hobby for everybody, I think. I remember the first time seeing Sugar Hill on Soultran. I was like, what are they doing on there? It was like shocking to me. Like, why are they on TV? Like for doing that, my mom bought me my first boom boxing, my mom's friend bought me my first notebook. It was like, just make ship notebook of papers with no line. It was a green book with these little pens that you bend down on each side. And when I first started making music, that's when I first realized that I was tapping into a”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had a really outside dream of being a millionaire by the time I was 30 years old, I actually calculated what it would take and all these different things. And I had no idea, I had no plan of how it was going to arrive at this point.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't actually remember the first time I rapped for because I would perform so much every single day in the kitchen that she would say go outside or go to sleep or go play basketball again or do something I would write these rhymes I got to a point in my life where even going outside and playing basketball wasn't as important Just became part of our lives.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The things that your kid can handle. You gave me this long leech and I learned so much and she was always there to put it back if I went a little too far and gave me one of the most important lessons in life, the work that you put into something is what you get out of it. She made that statement to me rather young, and I really took that to heart, the work that you put in is what you get out. Almost cost me my rap career, but I won't hold that against her because I didn't view the hours that I sat at the table as working hard. Something I love to do. So it didn't come hard to me. So I figured there was nothing would come out of it because of what she said. She didn't really mean it like that.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The entire day chased little girls around. It was just a typical neighborhood. It was just a beautiful place to grow up. Sometimes it turned really dark. Sometimes on Sunday at 11 o'clock there'll be young guys running through the projects with Uzi machine guns and shooting. And you would have to run into your building. In 15 minutes, when they're gone, you come back out and finish playing. It built my character, built my resolve, it built my strength. It developed certain paranoia and taught you these values and taught you integrity and taught you honesty. It taught you toughness as well because you needed that to survive. It was a brilliant upbringing. My mom, a beautiful, strong woman, some strange reason allowed me this long leash and allowed me to roam and to learn a lot of things on my own. I guess that comes from knowing your kid, you know.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a kid from Marsley Projects from Brooklyn, so it made me exactly who I am. Everyone has to find themselves growing up. And however far off track you go is pretty much dependent upon the environment that you grew up in and what you had to do or what you felt you had to do to survive. Growing up, you don't really understand the dangerous environment in which you live until you go outside of it. So for me, you know, it just was typical, it was normal. The ice cream man would come around. We opened up the Johnny pump and spray water on each other. We play basketball for...”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Goal is to find that truth for whatever I'm going through and try to tap into that. Staying true to yourself as you grow and as you mature to find that truth and in that and not being afraid of it. You know I got a million friends and I'm writing for them. Wherever you grow up, it's your root, right? It's everything you are.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't recognize it as a gift early on. So I just toyed with it. I would just sit at the table and bang on the table and, you know, write these rhymes all day long. I remember this one. It's pretty good. It was almost like foretelling what would happen. The king of hip-hop renewed like the Reebok, the key in the lock with words so provocative. As long as I live, I be not. I used to rap really fast. I toyed with these different styles. We would make these triplets. But put words in them. Adability to speak about situations and emotions and feelings that we were going through. When I say we, myself and my small circle of friends. That's really how I started writing music. I really wrote music for those 10 group of guys who was going through the same thing. And I wrote about our experiences. The thing we had just done the day before, the week before. And I would write it and they would, oh my goodness, this is, that's just what I was feeling when I'm writing my.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think excellence is being able to perform at a high level over and over again. You can hit a half court shot once. That's just the luck of the draw. If you consistently do it through eleven championships like Bill Russell, then that's excellence. Been successful a year or two, that's being hot. We call that hot. That's being in demand for a short span of time. Excellence is being able to perform at a high level for a long period of time. In a genre of music where it's almost microwave in your career, it's almost like in dog years, right? You last three years in hip-hop, you're fantastic. You last five years is like, wow, it's amazing. But if you last through a decade and beyond, you know, it's almost unheard of. In my genre music, I believe that I've achieved excellence. Creating this poetry came easy to me.”
2023-08-09 · Oprah's Super Soul · Super Soul Special: Oprah’s Master Class: Jay Z · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source