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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Jidenna Quotes

I like quality over quantity.

– Jidenna

I started singing because it was a natural evolution in hip-hop to me. Without Prince, I wouldn’t have embraced that. I wouldn’t have been able to embrace me.

– Jidenna

First of all, I respect The Game. He’s trail-blazed for artists like myself. I appreciate him, having – living in L.A. myself and knowing what he stands for and what he stood for.

– Jidenna

One day, my mum bought me this music production software for my computer, and I started making beats… I realised it was more like production than a video game, but it was a video game when I was playing it. That’s how I got into music production.

– Jidenna

My father raised me to build computers, hardware. Literally, as an 8 year old, I had a soldering iron and circuit boards, and this was in neighbourhoods that wouldn’t have a whole lot of money or anything. And I figured out ways to just hustle.

– Jidenna

When I brought home a 98 percent on a test, my father would say, ‘Ah, ah, where are the other two points? Go and get them, then bring them back.’ My father and Nigerian culture has always stood for excellence.

– Jidenna

If one door is closed, break a window anyway.

– Jidenna

Not unlike our country’s history, my personal history was founded upon an unfortunate history of racial conflict between black and white.

– Jidenna

I’ve gone down several paths. I started school as an engineer, but underneath it all, I knew I wanted to use instruments, not build them.

– Jidenna

America is haunted by an apparition steeped in slavery, and I wanted to remind everyone that, ‘Yo, we’ve got to handle this.’

– Jidenna

If we can believe in our own value, then we won’t try to denigrate and diss and just roast women all the time.

– Jidenna

People thought ‘Classic Man’ was processed. But then they realized, ‘Oh, this guy actually is that man, and he actually dresses like that.’

– Jidenna

My style is not specific to the antebellum South, but it’s heavily inspired by the Jim Crow era.

– Jidenna

I describe myself as a big kid with an old soul, I’m very playful whimsical, but I definitely have that old soul as well.

– Jidenna

The one thing that I learned in college, actually, was that you may reach tremendous highs and tremendous lows.

– Jidenna

I thought I had everything going for me. I wasn’t listening to nobody. And my dad was like, ‘Uh-uh, you can’t make money from music. You have to be a doctor, a lawyer, engineer. Something that’s going to do something for this world. Music doesn’t do anything.’ And I had to fight that, his passion, and fight the society that I was from.

– Jidenna

I work predominantly with tailors from Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal.

– Jidenna

We’re social beings, and I need to know and remember where I came from.

– Jidenna

Every single place that’s brushed upon me has made me the artist that I am – from Nigerian Highlife music and the vocal melodies that I grew up on when I would be sitting with my father and his fellow chiefs, to the funk and freeness of the Bay Area groove, to L.A.’s smooth G-funk legacy, Brooklyn’s lyricism, and now Atlanta’s trap history.

– Jidenna

Swanky means classy and funky.

– Jidenna

My name is Jidenna, which means ‘to hold or embrace the father’ in Igbo. It was my father who gave me this name and who taught me countless parables, proverbs, and principles that made me the man I am today.

– Jidenna

Jesus’ birthday is commercialized, so of course, Black History Month is commercialized.

– Jidenna

When I was a boy, I was sagging my pants like everyone else. Some boys become men and continue to sag their pants because that’s their form of rebellion.

– Jidenna

Everything you touch touches you.

– Jidenna

All across this world, especially within the African diaspora, we feel like there is a constant devaluing of our culture and our livelihood.

– Jidenna

I myself have been scrutinized by militarized police, but I know officers who actually handle themselves in a certain way that makes me feel safe.

– Jidenna

I am, always have been, and always will be proud of my Nigerian heritage.

– Jidenna

When hip-hop came along, men and women started dressing down as a form of rebellion.

– Jidenna

Nothing I’m doing is without its predecessors.

– Jidenna

It’s better to do your purpose imperfectly than to do someone else’s purpose perfectly.

– Jidenna

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