Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We don't want to wait on someone to hire us and give us a check. We want to create our own opportunities.
Being self-made means never making an excuse as to why you can't take steps toward whatever your goal is.
I want to thank my Eritrean fans for feeling connected to me and for supporting me. I feel extremely grateful.
I'm focusing on the music, but I still got a cold library of books that I've either read or I plan on getting to.
'Victory Lap,' even the title. It's the accumulation of trial and error; that's what I represent; trial and error.
Thought is powerful in all phases. Even in my career, even in my life, things end up exactly how I visualized them.
If you've got a plan, it's not just like a pipe dream. You have a step-by-step list of things to do to get to your goal.
Partnering with Atlantic Records creates the opportunity to take what we're doing to the next level, without compromising.
Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it's happening.
Proud 2 Pay - that's something that distinguishes me, that's something that defines me, and we're going to keep that going.
I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up.
I say that in the most humble way: I always knew that I could perform with the best of 'em and I could deliver with the best of 'em.
Material things ain't nothing. You feel me? At the end of the day, it's who you is. You wasn't born with it; you gon' die without it.
If you don't know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it's kind of hard to put things together.
If you're going to write about rap music and hip-hop, and you don't love it, then we don't need your opinion, and we revoke your opinion.
Snoop ain't never cosigned me, but I know everybody is like, 'That's the next Snoop.' Nah, I'm Nipsey, and I got to work to define myself.
If I wasn't involved in this hip-hop sh*t, I'd probably be breakin' the law to eat and feed my family and maintain the lifestyle that I'm used to.
Your parents are supposed to tell you to make decisions that are gonna help you and that'll have a positive effect on your life and your well-being.
I believe that economics is based on scarcity of markets. And it's possible to monetize your art without compromising the integrity of it for commerce.
'Victory' is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It's just about reaching a place in myself.
Any time a country transitioned to a fiat currency, they collapsed. That's just world history; you don't have to know about cryptocurrency to know that.
My thing is that I don't give no person that much power over my path that I'm walking. Not one person can make or break what I'm doing, except me or God.
An artist always know everything he does, you know what I'm saying, all the record he starts and don't end up in the public and just sit on the harddrive.
My experience with power, you can maintain it, or you get it taken from you. You get you some newfound power and go crazy, and it get taken from you quick.
We came up with TDE. As competitive as rap is, and as much as we're trying to exceed the standards we set for ourselves, we take their wins as our wins, too.
The artist part of me always wants to be appreciated. I read every review. But I never wanted to seek validation by awards or anything controlled by politics.
People that's in power - the central banks, these fiat currencies that are traded globally - they got influence over the messaging and the narrative in the media.
I would say that the Nipsey Hussle 'Crenshaw' release was an example of All Money In creating an artificial scarcity campaign for the physical side of 'Crenshaw.'
I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.
We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.
I'm touring the world, not doing nothing against the law, getting money to feed my family. I got employees that have felonies, and they can't get jobs. They work for me.
When I became a man, and I started to understand the difference between the truth and what your parents are supposed to tell you, there's a difference, know what I mean?
As is the case with most people in this game, I am driven by financial motives and creative motives; the question I had to answer is which motive I will give priority to?
When you say 'follow me on Twitter,' and you get 10 million people to follow you - you just leveraged your influence to add value to an app that you have no ownership in.
[In Eritrea] in key positions - president, government, police - everybody's the same [color]. It's a country run by its people. No racial class, everybody feels a part of it.
I went through every emotion with tryna pursue what I'm doing, you know what I mean? And I think what's gon' separate whoever's gon go for something, that you ain't gon' quit.
Obviously from childhood to my teenage years, I really came into my own. I left the house early; I was on the streets when I was, like, 15. I've been holdin' my own since that age.
If it wasn't for the music bein' my outlet, I'd probably be hustlin', I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to go and get a nine-to-five, I never finished high school or none of that.
I think that every artist - or anybody that's in business - could benefit from a direct-to-consumer strategy, so I think that that applies to us as artists and content creators, too.
I actually met The Game in my hood on Crenshaw and Slauson. I was outside on the block with 20 of my homies. I see the Range Rover, and we all walked up to his car. I handed him my CD.
I think everybody's trying to get to a place in themselves where they conquer what they was afraid of; they achieve some of their life goals, kept their word about what they were trying to do.
L.A. hip-hop is so different; it's so diverse. Out here, it's, like, funk-inspired; it's, like, '70s-skating-rink-inspired at times. It's Zapp-and-Roger-inspired; it's house-party-era-inspired.
If you 35, 28, or 30 years old, and you decide you're gonna pick up a rag and start bangin', and you can look yourself in the mirror and you still feel like you're a man? That's cool, do your thing.
As gang members, as young dudes in the streets, especially in L.A., we're the effect of a situation. We didn't wake up and create our own mindstate and our environment; we adapted our survival instincts.
A lot was accomplished in my mixtape career. But I still needed a few things: I needed to be recognized. I need to have radio. I need to have a real retail machine that can get us where we need to get that.
It's not called quitting if you quit while you ahead. It's about being aware and being strategic enough to know that you got to get out the pool at some point. You got to put your clothes back on and dry off.
I respect Snoop even aside from the music, just as a man, and especially the way he still represents who he is, after being a pop star and an icon. He's done it successfully and has still been able to balance it.
A lot of artists come into the game with a radio record, but they don't establish the fans as fans of their style of music. It's just that they're a fan of that song, and after that song plays out, it's real hard for 'em.
As an artist, as a brand, as a rapper, as a musician, you know you got a window and a lot of people, even an athlete; they don't have no exit strategy. It's just living in the false reality that it's going to be like this forever.
Looking at 2014, I look back: we made more money off 'Mailbox Money' than we would have made off taking an advance from anybody. We made more money letting our fans buy the stuff directly from us than what any label could have offered us.