Q-Tip Quotes

know the feelin, when you feelin like a villain, You be havin good thoughts but the evils be revealin'. And the stresses of life can take you off the right path, Jealousy and envy tends to infiltrate your staff... We gotta hold it down so we can move on past All adversities, so we can get through fast.

The thing that men and women need to do is stick together Progressions can't be made if we're separate forever

All we want in this life is peace, prosperity and a little paper...

Back in the days when I was a teenager, Before I had status and before I had a pager, You could find The Abstract listening to hip-hop, My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop, I said, well daddy don't you know that things go in cycles, The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin' like Michael, It's all expected, things are for the lookin', If you got the money, Quest is for the bookin'...

I am recognizing that the voice inside my head Is urging me to be myself, but never follow someone else Because opinions are like voices, we all have a different kind.

We got to mediate our greedy levels, Cause the lust of currency can have us sleepin with the devil.

We got to stay awake for all these lizards and snakes; Some of them come as friends, some of them come as Jakes.

Satisfaction, I have the right tactics... And if you need em I got crazy prophylactics.

The world is kinda cold and the rhythm is my blanket Wrap yourself up in it, if you love it, then you'll thank it.

There's divinity within because we come from the divine, A force that's not seen, but you feel it every time: When the wind blows, and the world turns, And the rain drops, and the baby cries, And the bird flies, and the ground quake, And the stars gleam.

How far must you go to gain respect? Um... Well, it's kind of simple: just remain your own. Or you'll be crazy sad and alone.

Rock and roll to the beat of the funk fuzz Wipe your feet really good on the rhythm rug If you feel the urge to freak, do the jitterbug Come and spread your arms if you really need a hug.

Genetics and beats? I feel like the drumbeat is a natural thing. Our heartbeat moves at a certain BPM. The drumbeat, being the first instrument, the platform for us, being that we all kind of come from that - it's all beats.

One thing the music industry has taught me is to manage my expectations.

Shorty, let me tell you about my only vice: It has to do with lots of lovin', and it ain't nuttin' nice.

I have a very connected history with Bilal. I heard his demo years ago. I heard all of the magic instantly. He's a master at interpretation of song.

And even though we both fly Give each other space and not the evil eye

We all have our own takes on things. To being yourself. The abstract, the whole thing that I play with, seems to result in seeing through your lenses, and once you express how you see things to others, you start to see there are similarities between all people. It's kind of like, no matter how far you go, you're still where you started, in a way.

I'll have you weak in the knees that you could hardly speak, Or we could do like Uncle L and swing an ep in my Jeep.

I grew up on the rough side of the tracks. If you looked like you were soft, you would be fodder for the wolves. I came up in my neighbourhood like, 'I'm just gonna be me,' and all the thugs just said, 'It's OK, he's special.' They knew I had the talent with the rhymes, so they kept me around.

Ayo, shout out to Mobb Deep, the Extra P Busta Rhymes, De La, the J Beez, so don't sleep

With the black male as a teenager, where you're coming from the ghettos and that kind of stuff, you've got to assert yourself, be macho, not let anybody walk over you, so that's where all this unnecessary bullshit comes from - from egos. That's why there are a lot of fights. That's how come the whole thing with rap has been violent. It's because of the male ego.

Rap is not pop, if you call it that then stop...

For me with art and all that stuff - I like abstraction. I like contortion. I mean, it's still truth. But it's truth through the center of the individual. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's fallacies or falsehoods. It just happens to be one perception of what's happening.

For people who love Tribe, I'm the defector. They say, 'You should get back with Ali to do the beats.' But a lot of people don't realize I did all the music in Tribe. In the first three albums, I did all the beats!

You never know: rain, sleet, hail, snow, See you gotta accept that's how things go. Prepare for the rainy day, or the sun's glow, But there's clouds movin' in and the clouds gonna blow.

So concisely, musically we are the herb So sit back and light me. Inhale... My style's kinda fat, reminiscent of a whale.

I do try to speak of positive things. I still try to, like, present two sides of the story, and I do try to relate to life in a 360 degree and not be one-dimensional. But by all means, manage expectations.

So pay attention, it's not hard to decipher, And after the horns, you can check out the Phifer

In 1999, I just came out of putting out the song 'Vivrant Thing' and 'Breathe and Stop' off the 'Amplified' album. Clive Davis signed me to Arista.

One step at a time, a man walked on the moon. One record got played, Kool Herc said, 'Boom!'

Predating the Internet and predating videos, you had an active imagination. You would hear sounds and then get mental pictures of what these sounds felt like to you. It engaged you and made you more invested in it. It made you want to get tickets to the show, buy the album, put the poster on the wall. Now it's sensory overload.

I like music with soul and passion and the good of humanity. As long as it has those things, I'm all the way in.

It's not just a struggle for blacks to be accepted by whites, but the other way around as well. A lot of people don't see that.

To be honest I'm not going to sell dreams like everybody else does and say, "Sure, it can be changed." I don't want to seem like a pessimist, but nothing's getting better.

I'm a cinephile. I love movies, I love film at every level. I'm a student of it. It informs me as does all art in my music, because there's stories, there's acts, there's moods, there's dynamics, there's moodiness, emotion. All of those things that play into a film. I think that could equally be said about music. It definitely informs me. Beats is stories.

You can tell how good a filmmaker is if you can turn the sound down but you can still feel the story.

Funky like your grandpa's drawers, don't test me We in like that, you're dead like Presley

When I watch films now, theres more of a musicality to the way the film are written.