"You just gotta mine it"

 
 

Interviewer: "Do you get inspired by artists now? ...A lot of new music to me, I know it makes me sound like an old head, but it just don't sound the same. It just don't feel the same."

Jay Z: "Nah, there's good music. You just gotta mine for it. I mean, before, I felt there was an abundance of it. But that's what happens with anything successful. 

 
[In the beginning] people were rapping because they loved to rap. And then it became this huge business, this multi-billion dollar business, so people that didn't even care to rap were like, 'I'm gonna figure out how to get some money in this.' So you had people who could rap a little bit, and saw it as a hustle. 
 
Then you had guys, CEO [types], rapping. And this is no disrespect to anyone... but like, B.I.G. told Puff, 'Yo, you should rap.' Puff wasn't a rapper. And he sold 7 million records. It might be more now, you know, with the catalog. But he sold 7 million records with No Way Out. He had never rapped before. When people see that, they emulate that. And now you have all kinds of CEOs rapping... it's flooded with guys who aren't rappers. 
 
So you just gotta mine it. You'll find good music still, it's just more difficult to find."
 
I've been catching up on 105.1 Breakfast Club interviews (Charlamagne and company.) 
I especially liked t
he latest sit-down they had this past fall with Jay Z. 
 
S
tarting at around 5:20 in the video embedded above, he says some good things
 about hip-hop, which could also apply in some ways to what's happened in tech in recent years, as the concept of startup "success" has gotten mainstream attention. 
 
Update: The video of the interview I had embedded has sadly been removed from YouTube. Let me know if you find a replacement. It was a great interview.
 
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