Mos Def quotes

Streets too loud to ever hear freedom ring

Say evacuate your sleep, it's dangerous to dream

the chains and pajamas and champagne can’t be the endgame — not for us. Reckless capitalism kills black people.

Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence

Budget cutbacks, but increased police presence

Like I got 16 to 32 bars to rock it

But only 15% of profits ever see my pockets

This New Math is whippin' motherfuckers' ass

You wanna know how to rhyme? You better learn how to add

My ink so hot, it burn through the journal

I'm blacker than midnight on Broadway & Myrtle

My poems crush bones into powder

You mumble like a coward

I'm Mos Def, you need to speak louder

Everybody wanna be the boss but there’s no plan. You just supposed to follow ’cause this dude got the most stuff or the shiniest things so he must be the leader ’cause look at his car. But these are not virtues—what a man owns.

I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product, not a person, so I've been going by Yasiin since '99. At first, it was just for friends and family, but now I'm declaring.

Don’t tell ’em they on the yellow brick road and then they crash into a brick wall.

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.

I ain't no perfect man

I'm tryin' to do the best that I can with what it is I have

Tomorrow may never come

For you or me, life is not promised

You better hold this very moment very close to you (Right now)

I’m ambitious but my ambition is not fame

The ambition is to be number one so you can experience the sensation in your ego of being number one.