Kamaal Ibn John Fareed, better known by his stage name Q-Tip, is an American rapper, record producer, singer, and DJ. Nicknamed the Abstract, he is noted for his innovative jazz-influenced style of hip hop production and his philosophical, esoteric and introspective lyrical themes.
Q-Tip Quotes
1. “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.”
— Q-Tip
2. “All we want in this life is peace, prosperity and a little paper…”
— Q-Tip
3. “We got to mediate our greedy levels,
Cause the lust of currency can have us sleepin with the devil.”
— Q-Tip
4. “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.”
— Q-Tip
5. “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.”
— Q-Tip
6. “The thing that men and women need to do is stick together
Progressions can’t be made if we’re separate forever.”
— Q-Tip
7. “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.”
— Q-Tip
8. “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’…”
— Q-Tip
9. “We got to stay awake for all these lizards and snakes;
Some of them come as friends, some of them come as Jakes.”
— Q-Tip
10. “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.”
— Q-Tip
11. “And even though we both fly
Give each other space and not the evil eye.”
— Q-Tip
12. “Satisfaction, I have the right tactics… And if you need em I got crazy prophylactics.”
— Q-Tip
13. “One thing the music industry has taught me is to manage my expectations.”
— Q-Tip
14. “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.”
— Q-Tip
15. “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.”
— Q-Tip
16. “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.”
— Q-Tip
17. “Shorty, let me tell you about my only vice:
It has to do with lots of lovin’, and it ain’t nuttin’ nice.”
— Q-Tip
18. “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.”
— Q-Tip
19. “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.”
— Q-Tip
20. “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.”
— Q-Tip
21. “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.”
— Q-Tip
22. “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.”
— Q-Tip
23. “So concisely, musically we are the herb
So sit back and light me.
Inhale…
My style’s kinda fat, reminiscent of a whale.”
— Q-Tip
24. “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.”
— Q-Tip
25. “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!”
— Q-Tip
26. “Rap is not pop, if you call it that then stop…”
— Q-Tip
27. “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.”
— Q-Tip
28. “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.”
— Q-Tip
29. “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.”
— Q-Tip
30. “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.”
— Q-Tip
31. “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.”
— Q-Tip
32. “You can tell how good a filmmaker is if you can turn the sound down but you can still feel the story.”
— Q-Tip
33. “One step at a time, a man walked on the moon.
One record got played, Kool Herc said, ‘Boom!’”
— Q-Tip
34. “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.”
— Q-Tip
35. “So pay attention, it’s not hard to decipher,
And after the horns, you can check out the Phifer.”
— Q-Tip
36. “When I watch films now, theres more of a musicality to the way the film are written.”
— Q-Tip
37. “Funky like your grandpa’s drawers, don’t test me
We in like that, you’re dead like Presley.”
— Q-Tip
38. “Ayo, shout out to Mobb Deep, the Extra P
Busta Rhymes, De La, the J Beez, so don’t sleep.”
— Q-Tip
39. “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.”
— Q-Tip
