Decoded by Jay-Z
by Parker · 14 things on Twos
- If the beat is time, flow is what we do with that time, how we live through it. The beat is everywhere, but every life has to find its own flow
- Money and power don’t change you, they just further expose your true self
- Identity isn’t a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow
- Hip-hop is controversial because people don’t bother trying to understand it
- It’s not about you. It’s about perceptions people had long before you even walked into the scene. The jokes on them because they’re really just fighting phantoms of their own creation
- Competition pushes you to become your best self, and in the end it tells you where you stand
- The key to success was believing in the quality of your own product enough to make people do business with you on your terms
- Great product was the ultimate advantage in competition
- The secret to any long-term success is to be yourself
- You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate
- Having a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other is the most common thing in the world
- The real bullshit is when you act like you don’t have contradictions inside you, that you’re so dull and unimaginative that your mind never changes or wanders into strange, unexpected places
- You can’t fake whatever the current trend is if it’s not you, because it might work for a second, but it’s a house of sand
- You can want success all you want, but to get it, you can’t falter. You can’t skip. You can’t sleep. One eye open, for real, and forever