i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots
Saul WilliamsRead
There is no music more powerful than hip-hop. No other music so purely demands an instant affirmative on such a global scale. When the beat drops, people nod their heads, “yes,” in the same way that they would in conversation with a loved one, a parent, professor, or minister.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Hip-hop music transcends boundaries and connects people universally.
In this quote, Saul Williams emphasizes the unique and powerful ability of hip-hop music to resonate with audiences on a global level. He suggests that when hip-hop plays, it creates an immediate and affirmative response in listeners, much like the affirmation one gives in meaningful conversations with loved ones, illustrating the genre's deep emotional and cultural impact.
Themes
Hip-HopMusicPowerfulGlobalConnectionEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech at a music festival, one could use this quote to highlight the unifying power of music.
More from Saul Williams
All quotes →Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life.
Saul WilliamsRead
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid of the darkness. We trust that the moon shall guide us. We are determining the future at this very moment. We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone. Our music is our alchemy.
Saul WilliamsRead
Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence.
Saul WilliamsRead
A lie preserved in stained glass doesn't make it more true.
Saul WilliamsRead
I surrendered my beliefs and found myself at the tree of life injecting my story into the veins of leaves only to find that stories like forests are subject to seasons
Saul WilliamsRead
Similar quotes
The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses. A seed grows in writing as in nature. The seed of the idea is developed by both labor and the unconscious, and the struggle that goes on between them.
Carson MccullersRead
I think that in an increasingly virtual world, lovingly produced artefacts are at a premium.
Alan MooreRead
Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing for long years. And for this reason, some old things are lovely warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.
D. H. LawrenceRead
I grew up like Athena — covered with playing cards instead of armor — and, at the age of seven, materialized on a TV show, doing magic.
Ricky JayRead
Fashion is everything that can pass fashionable
Coco ChanelRead
I don't think one should be comfortable standing on a stage with people applauding and laughing at every stupid thing you say.
Joaquin PhoenixRead