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The Chronic Represented Everything That I Hated About Hip-hop As A Fan, But Then Later Represented Everything That I Stood For As A Musician And Engineer.

-Questlove

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The Chronic Represented Everything

Questlove

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The Chronic Represented Everything That I Hated About Hip-hop As A Fan, But Then Later Represented Everything That I Stood For As A Musician And Engineer.

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We Have To Get Back To "we." It's Important To Get Back To "we" Not Just "i."

The President Is Just The Coach Of A Football Team. You Need The Right Support, The Right Stadium, The Right Players, The Right Staff. An Excellent Coach Is Not Going To Win Games.

I Hate Videos. I'm Meticulous On Everything From Cover Art, Fonts, Productions, Mixing. But When It Comes To Videos, I Just Feel So Defeated.

In Terms Of Being A 'sneakerhead,' There Was One Point Where I Was Obsessively Following Every Sneaker Blog. That's The Beauty Of Twitter: To Get The Heads Up On What's Coming Out.

Meaninglessness Takes Hold Because Meaninglessness Is Addictive.

Meaninglessness

How Do You Plan A Rebirth? I'm Not Sure You Do. You Just Stand In The Darkness Until You Can't Endure It Any Long, And Then You Move Forward Until You're Standing In The Light.

It's Funny, I Can See The Science In How Music Is Made With Other Artists, But It's Hard For Me To Dissect My Own Thing.

I Don't Bask In The Awards I've Won, Read My Bank Statements, I Refuse. To Me, That's How You Start Losing The Hunger.

Time Will Tell. Time Is Always Telling. Time Never Stops Telling.

The Only Mofos In My Circle Are People That I Can Learn From.

Part Of Me Would Just Like To Relax And Have One Job That Pays Me The Amount I Need To Survive. And Another Part Of Me Wants The Creativity That Comes Out Of Struggle And Frustration And Fear. It's A Never-ending Cycle, Which Must Be How I Want It, On Some Level.

My Life's Goal Is To Find A Happy Medium For Sampling To Be Not Only Legal But For The Right Parties To Benefit From It. There Have To Be Sampling Laws. The Survival Of Hiphop Is Based On That.

After 2001, Everyone In The Soulquarians Blew Up, Which Wasn't Expected. We All Got The Success, And Then Everybody Froze.

Funk Never Dies. It Is Eternal. It Just Smells A Little Different From Time To Time.

I Don't Believe In Good Music And Bad Music Anymore. I'm Through With That Phase Of My Life. Sometimes I Just Wanna Feel Good, So I Put On A Good Record. But Mostly I'm More Of A Businessman Than A Music Fan, So I'm Listening To Music In Terms Of, Is This Effective Or Not Effective?

Switching Off Perfection Switched On The Human Quality

My First Gig Was At Radio City Music Hall When I Was 13.

Jay-z Is A Dude That Can Give You A Hundred 'simpsons' Quotes, Like, 'what You Know About The Monorail?'

I Never Want To Get To That Level Of Poverty Where Taking A Bath Has To Be A Hot-pot Experience.

The Chronic Represented Everything That I Hated About Hip-hop As A Fan, But Then Later Represented Everything That I Stood For As A Musician And Engineer.

I Prefer To Unwind By Djing. I Learned That From Mike D From The Beastie Boys. After A Show, He Would Dj. Once I Saw That, I Wanted To Do That. And Now Djing Is Like My Lifeline. I Love The Power It Represents.

When You Live Your Life Through Records, The Records Are A Record Of Your Life.

I Think The Music Comes First, Then Comes The Fashion, And Thus, The Lifestyle. I Believe It Starts With Music, And Then The Person Delivering It Delivers The Lifestyle, The Fashion. Madonna Is A Great Example Of That.

It's A Funny Word, Persistence. It Means Not Giving Up, But It Also Means Just Passing On Through Time.

I've Come To The Conclusion That The Average Person Can Do About Four Things A Day, Like Four Real Things A Day.

Highlight Reels Are About That One Person. After A Barrage Of Highlight Reels, You Get The Sense That You Can Do It Without A Team. But Music Thrived The Most When Groups Were Involved. People Lose Sight Of That - That Community Makes The World Run.

I Really Appreciate When People Use Their Fame And Their Voice For More Than Just Self-promotion, Starting A Dialogue About A Topic Or An Issue Much Bigger Than Themselves.

My Parents Were Really Strict About Me Not Watching Cartoons.

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I Have A Lot Of Those 'forrest Gump,' I-was-there Moments.

I Keep Moving Through Time And Time Keeps Moving Through Me. And Through That Process, Life Takes Shape. The Question Is What Shape It Is. I'm Not The First Person To Ask That Question, Or To See How Absurd It Is To Think There's A Real Answer. Maybe Life's A Circle.

I Hate Holidays Because It's The Quietest; It's The Most Deafening Sound In My Apartment.

I Feel Like The Downfall Of Any Person Is The Second An Artist Starts Celebrating Their Work Themselves, That Becomes Problematic.

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Resistance Here Doesn't Mean Revolution. It Doesn't Mean Storming The Barricades. Resistance Means Using Art For The Things That It Does Best, Which Is To Create Human Portraits And Communicate Ideas And Forge A Climate Where People Of Different Races Or Classes Are Known To You Because They Make Themselves Known. In The Simplest Terms, Art Humanizes. It Opens The Circuit Of Empathy. And Once That Process Happens, It's That Much Harder To Think Of People As Part Of A Policy Or A Statistic. Art Reverses The Alienation That Can Creep Into Society.

I'm A 24-hour Tweet Machine, I'm A 24-hour Blogger. When There's No Pressure On Me, I Can Talk And Write And Lecture With The Best Of Them. But Put A Deadline On Me And I Start Getting Writer's Block.

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I Believe That The Only People Who Really, Truly Benefit From Any Of The Policies Of Republicans Are The Wealthy. I'm In That 1 Percent Tax Bracket, But I'm Not A Man Of Wealth.

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I Feel Like The Downfall Of Any Person Is The Second An Artist Starts Celebrating Their Work Themselves, That Becomes Problematic. And You Know, I Don't Sit There, I Don't Bask In The Awards I've Won, You Know, Read My Bank Statements, I Refuse. To Me, That's How You Start Losing The Hunger. So For Me Personally, I Just Don't Celebrate It. I'm Happy, Right Now.

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And Even Though People Like To Furrow Their Brow Like They Suspect You're Not Being Honest About Yourself, The Truth Is That They Worry That You're Not Serving Their Idea Of You.

Crack Offered A Lot Of Money To The Inner-city Youth Who Didn't Go To College. Which Enabled Them To Become Businessmen. I Know About Maybe Five People In The Entertainment Industry Who Did Their Peak Work As A Result Of Crack Usage.

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What I'm Slowly Realizing Is That I Believe That Most Of Us Felt That We Could Relax A Little Bit After November 2, 2008, Because Of The Progress And The Spirit That It Took To Get Barack Obama In The White House. And What We Didn't Realize, Is That Was Really The Beginning. That Was Really The Beginning Of The Struggle And Not The End Of A Struggle, To Come From Colonial Times Through Slavery, Through The Jim Crowe Laws, Through The Civil Rights Period To The White House As, Like A Point A/point B Journey. Point B Of Course Being The End.

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Hip-hop Is So Much About Character And Caricature That People Just See You As A Character. Very Rarely Are You Flesh And Bone To People.

I Was One Of Those Skeptics That Thought That Yoga Was For Kooks. Now I'm On A Very Strict Regimen. You Know, I Work Out. That's Another Thing I've Learned Relaxin', Sleep, Yoga. I Didn't Know That That's As Crucial As Going Hard, As Workin' Hard, As Exercising Hard. I Never Knew. I Thought That, "okay, I Gotta Be At The Gym Like Five Hours Everyday Going Balls To The Wall." And What My Yoga Instructor, What My Trainer, What They're Trying To Teach Me Is That, "no, It's Sleep." That's Important. That's Just As Important As Workin' Out.

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I've Always Been A Lover Of Hoodies. I'm A Guy That Travels A Lot. I'm A Guy That Spends A Lot Of Time On A Cold Air-conditioned Tour Bus. I'm A Guy That Likes To Watch Movies In Peace. I'm A Guy That Likes To Travel In The Airport In Peace.

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