In 2013, the week before I dropped ‚Crenshaw,‘ ‚Complex‘ wrote an article that said that Nipsey Hussle is one of the top 25 underperforming artists. I was so offended that I responded with my own opinion about these journalists – their point of view is not validated in our culture.

I made that first record in 2008, alongside the EP, but my label at the time waited three years to release it. They thought maybe someone bigger would buy it, but they didn’t, so in the end they just released it themselves.

You get to a certain age, and you are forbidden access. You’re not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines; you’re not going to get played on radio, and you’re not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see that a reporter could do much to a president, do you?

I became a journalist at 17. A few hours later, I saw my first dead body, which was somewhat… colourful. That’s when I learned you can go on throwing up after you run out of things to throw up.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

I think the first thing you should know is that nobody in country music ‚made it‘ the same way. It’s all different. There’s no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Probably the reason it’s a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you’re getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you’re going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there’s a kind of bundle.

The effect of music on fashion has been immense, especially hip-hop and urban music.

I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I’ve never been interested in that.

In pop music, the public usually see the results – the hit records, the Grammy Awards performances, the concert tours – but not all the work that goes into getting into the spotlight. And not everyone realizes that, even if you have a lot of talent, chances are you won’t make it.

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.

I’ve noticed that when I am selling a lot of records, certain things become easier. I’m not talking about getting a table in a restaurant.

That little Miley Cyrus… she’s like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she’s Hannah Montana, but what people don’t realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she’s 40 years old!

What changed our lives forever was when Malcolm had the idea to sell rock ‚n roll records to trendy customers.

People think because I’ve got some success, I’ve made it, but in my eyes it’s like, ‚How long has Jay Z been in the business? How many albums has he got?‘ Not that I’m trying to be Jay Z, but I am trying to be around for a long time.

She’s a total professional, a diva, a mega-star, not just in music but in the entertainment industry. You always learn from the greats, and J.Lo is one.

Michael Jordan changed so much in basketball, he took his power to make a difference. It’s so much going on in music right now and somebody has to make a difference.

In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

I’ve had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, ‚Your music sucks, you don’t know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don’t know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.‘

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

We are all the President’s men.

I knew ‚Crenshaw‘ had elevated me and distinguished me.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

I’m not searching for hard news; I’m not a journalist, but I’m interested in pushing to boundaries of where we can do the kind of stories that we want to do. I mean, it’s a big world and CNN has made it a lot bigger and they haven’t flinched.

Even though I’m known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.

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 think Ye is important to hip-hop.

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, ‚Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we’ll talk.‘

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

I wanted to sell a million records, and I sold a million records. I wanted to go platinum; I went platinum. I’ve been working nonstop since I was 15. I don’t even know how to chill out.

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‚Is this it? Are we still relevant?‘

We was able to become real successful in the mixtape space.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

Even before Snapchat, you go back into my career from Day One or interview people that knew me for 25 years, they’re going to tell you I’ve been DJ Khaled my whole life.

To go indie is a thing. But to put an album in the stores, you need a distribution label.

I have taken taking my music to labels for years, and everyone just thought it was creepy. They thought the images with the music were weird and verging on psychotic.

Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.

I think country music is popular – has been popular and will always be popular because I think a lot of real people singing about a lot of real stuff about real people. And it’s simple enough for people to understand it. And we kind of roll with the punches.

I came to California and got signed at a young age. And it’s not like you see in the movies, where you start rubbing shoulders with Timbaland and Pharrell, and you become a giant pop star.

I’m not besotted with the notion of being on CNN to the point that I’m going to suddenly morph into Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour. I’m not a foreign correspondent.

I think Kenny Chesney or Garth Brooks would be the coolest duet partners. I look up to them so much for their work ethics.

The closest I ever came to getting married was just before I started singing. In fact, my first record saved my neck.

I’m well past the age where I’m acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You’re not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you’re not going to get played on radio and you’re not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

There are no record companies in Waikiki.

All of my records, I produced, put together completely. All of them. Maybe Drake might come with an idea, and I might finish it. You gotta remember what a producer is. Quincy Jones is a producer.

I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don’t think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

Partnering with Atlantic Records creates the opportunity to take what we’re doing to the next level, without compromising.

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.

The major networks, the cable networks, they’re being prosecutors. They’re judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c’mon, that’s ridiculous. But they’re doing it.

Ever since the beginning of rock and roll, there’s been an Axl Rose. And it’s just boring. It’s totally boring to me.

There was a time Michael Jackson couldn’t get his video on MTV because he was considered to be ‚urban.‘ The Michael Jackson. So I literally have to be the Michael Jackson of apparel in order to break down the doors for everyone who will come after I’m gone, after I’m dead.

If I tried to make a commercial album, it would be a complete flop. I have no idea what the world at large likes.

A lot of the records you buy, there’s nothing you can hold in your hand, it’s all 1’s and 0’s, this digital cloud floating in the ether. but with analog albums, you can hold it in your hand.

I can’t think in terms of journalism without thinking in terms of political ends. Unless there’s been a reaction, there’s been no journalism. It’s cause and effect.

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don’t think much of the rest of the newspaper.