Mos Def Quotes

• With guys I revere, like Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X, their look is less about style than purpose and the expression of beauty. It wasn’t just about being noticed, you know?

  Mos Def

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• To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.

  Mos Def

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• Record companies are not necessarily interested in you realizing your artistic dream. The bottom line is that they got to sell records.

  Mos Def

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• Reckless capitalism kills black people.

  Mos Def

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• I’m an independent thinker. And I’m not the poster child for any movement. I’m trying to support whatever’s right no matter where it is.

  Mos Def

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• I know what it feels like to have the door slammed firmly in my face, so I’m cool with that.

  Mos Def

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• I don’t have advice for people on how to dress. People should dress based on what they find beautiful. My best advice: Keep your clothes clean.

  Mos Def

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• I believe the projects were a social experiment; we were laboratory rats stacked on top of each other, and people just knew, inherently, that there was something wrong. There’s not a lot of regard for the property by the residents.

  Mos Def

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• Hip-hop is the last true folk art.

  Mos Def

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• But even creeps deserve to live someplace halfway decent.

  Mos Def

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• Bob Marley performed the ‘One Love Peace’ concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There’s always been that in black music and culture in general. It’s no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what’s going on in black life. It’s not unusual for hip-hop.

  Mos Def

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• You want to know how to rhyme, then learn how to add. It’s mathematics.

  Mos Def

• What I take from writers I like is their economy – the ability to use language to very effective ends. The ability to have somebody read something and see it, or for somebody to paint an entire landscape of visual imagery with just sheets of words – that’s magical.

  Mos Def

• Twitter freaks me out. You have followers? It feels so obsessive and proprietary.

  Mos Def

• To me, the job of the artist is to provide a useful and intelligent vocabulary for the world to be able to articulate feelings they experience everyday, and otherwise wouldn’t have the means to express in a meaningful and useful way.

  Mos Def

• There are a lot of people who call themselves teachers or leaders, but they’re really just propagandists.

  Mos Def

• That’s what I’ve been trying to strive for – to draw a clear picture, to open up a new dimension.

  Mos Def

• My presence speaks volumes before I say a word.

  Mos Def

• Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years it’s a name that the streets taught me a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment and I feel I’ve done quite a bit with that name and it’s time to expand and move on.

  Mos Def

• It’s possible and available to any artist to be himself or herself on their own terms, to be accepted and embraced by black people. You don’t have to be a thug to get love from black people.

  Mos Def

Mos Def (49)

Birth:	11th December, 1973
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Activist, Actor, Singer

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Today's Anniversary - 2nd April

Births

• 1965 - Rodney King
• 1966 - Teddy Sheringham
• 1928 - Serge Gainsbourg
• 1939 - Marvin Gaye
• 1977 - Michael Fassbender

Deaths

• 1891 - Albert Pike
• 1865 - Richard Cobden
• 2005 - Pope John Paul II
• 2007 - George Sewell
• 1872 - Samuel Morse