Kevin Gates quotes: intelligent insights from the rapper.
“Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Yeah, I’m a convicted felon. I also have a masters in psychology. I also scored a 31 on my ACT at 16 in jail.”
“Wise men change. Fools stay the same.”
“I don’t have a religion. I ain’t nothing wrong with church as long as they selling chicken. ‘Cause I read the Quran, I read the Kabalah, I read the Bible. They all got the same three basic principles: love God, love your neighbor as yourself, and… as far as me being, I live by those principles.”
“It’s about really really being who you are as an individual and not apologizing for it, that’s what it is. I can feel the growth from my first mixtape to now. On every song, I want to give you a piece of who I am as an individual.”
“I love to make music, I love to get tattoos. That’s just what I love. If I wasn’t getting paid I’d still do it.”
“Whatever I have a natural love for or respect or admiration for, I tattoo it on my body. My next tattoo is probably going to be Muhammad Ali. I’ve got Bob Marley, I’ve got Elvis, I’ve got Malcolm X. I’ve got so many tattoos. It’s crazy. I’m really running out of space. But when I go get tattoos, it’s therapeutic for me also.”
“Jail and the streets go hand in hand. You can’t have one with out the other. They coincide.”
“You can learn from a dummy. You can watch a dummy and learn what not to do. I’ve always been an observant individual. You don’t know how much you love something until you can’t do it. That’s one thing I can say that I learned. I learned how much I love music.”
“Emotionally, I’m an introvert. But it comes off as aggression.”
“Music’s the most therapeutic thing for me. Because I suffer with depression, and it’s my only form of releasing it. Just as you [the dude interviewing him] do with your recorder, I record my thoughts. I vent. It’s a channel. I’m an introvert when it comes to displaying my emotion. And because I’m such an introvert, the best thing for me to do is to talk to the mic.”
“Marriage is the most wonderful thing ever.”
“I like being with my family; that’s my party.”
“Love is a battlefield, not a one-night stand.”
“Breathing is so important with physical activity, then how much more important is it with psychological activity?”
“Anything lost can be found again, except for time wasted. A vision without action is merely a dream. Action: it’s the grind, it’s the hustle, it’s the persistence.”
“You have to be intimate with a person to know that person.”
“Any artist that’s as serious about making music as I am, I’m cool with that. But if you tellin’ me, ‘Man, send me a verse and I’m a send you a verse.’ No. That’s not collaborating. We don’t know each other and I’m serious about this music.”
“I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.”
“The land is a blessing to us. The earth is our mother. She laughs, cries, breathes, and feels just as we do.”
“The ones you hate the most tend to be the people you know.”
“If you associate yourself with peer pressure or complacency, you’re destined for failure.”
“Never break or fold. That’s what it takes to be major.”
“I’ve always stood on my own two. I don’t need a team. I don’t do the entourage thing, 30 people, I don’t do that. That’s just not me.”
“I don’t give anyone a reason to hate me. They create their own drama out of pure jealousy. Keep ears opened, mouth closed.”
“I love God, I love everybody else around me as myself, and I love my enemy.”
“Don’t get mad at me for being the best of what I was created to be.”
“If it matters to you, pursue it aggressively.”
“I came in the game with a different attitude than I have now. And I had to grow. I had to mature. In that growth and in that maturity, that point of maturity, I realized that, ay, the people that interview me, we really only having a conversation. And they not from the same walk of life that I am, so my life is super interesting to them.”
“I got six jobs. I don’t get tired!”
“Knowledge is provided but only to those who need to know.”
“My grandmother was an English teacher for a while. And she stressed to me the importance of reading—being able to articulate well.”
“I’m a bookworm. I know with my physical appearance that I don’t look like the typical reader. I’m in Barnes & Noble all the time, and you can look at people that look like they are supposed to be in there. I am in there, pants sagging, hat backwards.”
“I don’t pay attention to sales because it’s not about that for me. It’s about the music. Music is all I have.”
“I always had music growing up, but music was also like a journal. It was like my personal diary or personal journal.”
“I just always wanted to study human behavior because every psychologist that I would talk to would tell me I was bipolar, and I know I’m not bipolar, so I had to perform a psychoanalysis on myself to find out that I have unresolved grief.”
“The energy in the daytime is so different because everyone is so unhappy and depressed and you can pick up on that energy psycho-kinetically. So I like to come out at night. Everything’s settled, you can see more.”
“I suffer from depression. Severe cases of it. Not one case of depression, not a severe case, but severe cases of depression. Music is my only outlet, it’s therapeutic to me. It’s a release. It’s how I vent emotionally.”
“I can’t say any artist inspired me, because I’m inspired by the things that go on around me.”
“The things that are most difficult for me to put into words and speak about, I put into my music. I’m just super passionate about my craft and super passionate about what I do.”
“I experience great hurt. This hurt allows me to know I’m alive.”
“I know I write a lot of my best music in the car, like late night. Three, four in the morning.”
“My music is incredible. I don’t know what to call it because I’ve yet to see an artist display the different talents I display or create the different genres that I have created; from the rock ‘n’ roll to heavy metal to soft rock to rap to country. I display so many styles. That’s why they love me.”
“I’ve had good times and I’ve had bad times and I reminisce, maybe when I lay down, but throughout my day I keep myself engulfed in whatever moment I’m in because it could steer me into a depressed state.”
“I have trouble with letting go. That’s my problem. Anybody that has extreme highs and extreme lows is bipolar to any psychologist and that’s not necessarily the truth.”
“Without an understanding of bad, how can one truly have an appreciation of good?”
“Use the things that make you angry as fuel to make you better.”
“If you’re not in your own lane, create one.”
“I’m a big skeptic so I won’t just go off what an individual may tell me. I gotta do the research. I’ma get different literature on that one subject and just compare and contrast. I do my own selective studies.”
“You learn fast or die young.”
“I like where we at now, but I’m in love with where we going.”
“When you come up in the slums, having nothing makes you humble.”
“I look at other people’s lives, and some people feel like they’re too old to play with toys. But I still go through the toy section at the store, ’cause there were toys that I wanted when I was little that I couldn’t have. So I still get them.”
“I got it out the mud. Ain’t nobody ever gave me nothing.”
“The problem lies with self, and a lot of times we don’t look inward as individuals. We always look for something else as a substitute, as a pacifier. You have to look at self first.”
“I’m a perfect imperfection. My craft has been perfected. I just need affection, emotionally.”
“I’m a super sensitive individual also. The smallest thing might stand out to me. I might go make a song about this interview. I live life then rap about it. Who knows what I may say? I just really say what I feel. When I’m in the moment, whatever I’m feeling, I get it all out.”
“When you stand for something, you’ve got to stand for it all the way, not halfway.”
“Wealth is not of the pocket. It’s of the heart. It’s of the mind. I live like that. You could give me a fish and feed me for a day, but if you teach me to fish, you’ve fed me forever. So that’s really my philosophy with it all.”
“I love to be clean. I wear the same things, all of my clothes pretty much look the same. I’m a plain and simple type of guy. I don’t really do a lotta busy colors and things of that nature. I feel like less is more.”
“I adapt and I adjust to whatever environment I’m in.”
“If I tell the truth about me, what can the world say? I’d love to be accepted, but I’m not seeking acceptance. If you are a fan, it’s because you’re a fan of who I am psychologically, emotionally, and individually. The world can relate to a human being more than it can relate to a superstar.”
“Why accept failure when success is free?”
“What poor person fits into society socially? You seem like a great person, but you’re not going to leave out of this building and put one of those homeless people in your car. You treat them differently than I do. When I finish with this salad here, you can eat off my plate. That’s just the individual that I am because I’ve walked in those shoes at one time.”
“You can’t make everybody else happy and still stay on top.”
“But I really live in a box. I’m always locked away in the studio, so I never get to see those people anyway. And if I do see them, I don’t even think—to be honest, I’m so focused right now I couldn’t even see myself encountering those individuals that I spoke about from my past.”
“I have trust issues with allowing other individuals to know my innermost secrets for fear of how I may be viewed. Everyone has this.”
“If I told you I was different would you understand the difference?”
“I used to deal with things totally differently than the way that I deal with things now. And I believe that comes through growth and maturity. And when you grow, your way of life changes. Everything changes. The things that were interesting at one point, they’re not as interesting now.”
“I don’t sleep much. I work, I work, I work.”
“Whatever an individual chooses to do with themselves, long as it doesn’t affect me and they’re respectful with it, I don’t care what they do. Because I’m not perfect and I have flaws, so who would I be to be judgmental?”
“When people say my name, I want them to feel a certain way, everybody walks around so numb. They’re not in touch. In the technological age, we become cold-hearted. I’m going to provoke you to feel. That’s what Islah does.”
Related: Kevin Gates net worth.
