Vince Staples Quotations

Circumstances dictate your set of values, your set of morals.

Basic emotions can be conveyed through anything. As long as you show people that you're human, they'll relate to it.

Every project has to stand on its own. It's a different identity within each project, and I feel like that's the way it should be.

I want to have an impact because I don't want anybody to have to go through what I went through.

My cares come from a very selfish place 'cause in reality I'm young, and I haven't had the experience to be mature yet.

Some people lose sense of what their music was when their life starts to get better.

Some people make their best music when life is horrible.

The happiest people, the ones you like the most, they're never worried about being rich.

The place where you're from defines who you are. You put yourself in the wrong situation, the wrong things happen.

Touring helped me understand where I needed to be better in my music.

What's important to me is people just being people.

When I was growing up, skateboarding was big and basketball was big.

You have to captivate and entertain if you want your message to get across.

At a very young age, I could look at people and tell that everyone was, in a sense, worthless in their own mind. And you couldn't trust anyone. No one was good.

I could care less about the radio or the TV or album sales. I want that connection with people because when I'm able to walk down the street, I want them to feel like I've done something for them and helped their life because I've never felt that way about a musician.

Separation is very important to me. I don't strive to be a celebrity. My music has nothing to do with me at the end of the day. Once it's made and it's purchased, it belongs to whoever.

The best song is what resonates with that one person the most. It's why, if you ask a million people on the face of the Earth, they're all gonna have different favorite songs, their own best song ever, because that's the one that touched them the most.

I say what I have to say at the moment and when I don't want to say it anymore, then I won't.

As a living, breathing person, you must love things that derive from nature.

We live in an age where everyone is so opinionated about everything in general in life, especially their expertise or their personal knowledge of anything that they're commenting on.

I'm not really scared of a lot of things. I'm scared of possums. And I'm scared of raccoons sometimes, it depends on how big it is - I'm scared of the smaller raccoons because the bigger ones are slower.

We still wading in the water... Cocaine, blunts, marinating in the water. Lean and took a puff, and then she gave it to my father, Used to take the bullets out so I could play with the revolver. Satan serenading ever since I was a toddler, Tell 'em talk is cheap...niggas living for the dollar.

I think the opinion is worth less now than it ever has been.

I feel like finding the balance is the struggle with making music in general.

I live to die; better that than to live a lie.

I don't have a message. You already have all these people telling you how to live, who to be, what to wear, what to drive, what drugs to do - I just want people to see what I see.

I feel like it's impossible to be completely yourself, because you'll always get bored; you have to push your own limits.

I hate when a show has an age limit. Like a little tiny child is standing outside, like, 'Hey, I wanted to go but I couldn't.' That sucks.

When kids can't come to my show, I feel bad, because grown-up 21 and up people really probably don't need my help as much as an 11-year-old child.

I would for sure do a thousand dollar meet and greet because literally every single person knows where I live.

If you don't put out a shirt for eight months, that doesn't mean it took you eight months to make the shirt.

I was never like, "Oh man, I want a Grammy and I'll do whatever it takes." Someone like that might not do what it takes to have a decent touring career, because they're in the studio trying to master whatever they're doing to win a Grammy.

Music was never really something I wanted to do, so I never thought about it as a kid.

Everyone serves a purpose.

Every song with lyrics is lyrical.

I wake up sometimes with an idea and then I write it down. It's not necessarily easy, but when you focus on something it comes.

I don't really have a focus, I just make music.

When people ask me my influences and I'm like, "nobody" they're like, "there has to be somebody." People seem to think you have to have an influence.

Someone who only wants to play sold-out shows will find a tempo that works at the shows and then focus on making that kind of music, but maybe they'll miss out on other things because of it.

That's the crazy part about music, that you can just be someone and it means something.

I just make what I'm making, and then one day I won't want to make it anymore. I think that's a luxury we should be able to have as people, especially as artists.

I'm just saying what I think about at the time. I don't make a point to do anything, really.

We're all equally important at the end of the day.

The work is the understanding of the people that you're speaking for. The further you get away from that, the further you are from the work.

So many things come from people's parents lying to them about the truth about things. I feel like, once those ideas die with people, we'll be good in a couple of generations.

I love Louisiana fried fish, but it's all Martin Luther King, I can't go over there.

I don't have any dreams or aspirations or goals I want to meet music-wise, so there's nothing to keep me from being level-headed.

Radio is better than writing because they can't lie. Cause sometimes writers be straight lying, bro, and these headlines be making me mad.

If your children don't fight, they won't love each other when they get older! It's a common thing.

If you hit a kangaroo in the street and you have to pull out on the side of the road, it can get back up and murder you.

Where I come from, there's no common enemy, there's no "why." There's no, "I hate white people."

I live in a pretty liberal place, so it's a lot of hidden racism and things like that. If you really look up California, it's a really shitty place when it comes to things like that.

Whenever you have people in power, they try to control people. It's not necessarily a bad thing to control people - you can control people for good, you can control people for bad, but you're gonna try and control people.

Rappers kinda look stupid sometimes. Most of the time. I'm pretty sure I look stupid too a lot.

A lot of music comes from a selfish place…

There's a price tag on everything including black people's lives and what they do with them.

My brothers used to beat me up, but I used to fight my sisters 'cuz I couldn't hit them back, so I had to find specific severe ways to punish them.

Drugs are horrible; I say no to drugs. I've never done drugs in my life.

I hate when I lose my voice and then people try and talk to me and I seem like I'm being rude and then I hurt their feelings. That sucks.

When I was a kid I used to want to be a Beethoven or something. That was my dream.

People just tell me I'm supposed to be sensitive, and I'm not. But I think I'm very emotional. I'm very caring.

When you have this job [as an entertainer] you're suddenly not a person anymore.

Sprite really does taste different everywhere! That's like a fact. Because of certain regulations, you can only put so many sugars...

I feel like that's the reason a lot of pop music doesn't have that grasp that other forms of music do, because it's more rooted in only the happier aspects of life - there's not really a connection.

I'm mad emotional. But my emotions are - I don't really get just like sad, I get hyper, and I be like mad, and I get hungry - that's like my main emotion.

School doesn't really teach you how to interact with people properly, you learn that outside of school.

I think there's too much of the wrong type of influences that stem from hip-hop.

If you try to make music and try to convey to everyone that everything is all peachy-keen, you might come off like you're full of it, and that could be something that draws listeners away.

I remember, once, my sister used to tell me that they found me in the trash-can when I was younger, so one time I pushed my sister into a trash-can - I put it over her head and pushed her down the street. And then after that, we been close ever since.

It's human nature, we take a mile when we're given an inch. We're crazy. You see what we did to the animals! They don't even exist anymore!

It really hurts my feelings when people are mean to old people, or when people yell at their little kids. Just ask them what's wrong, bro. I think we all just need to be nicer.

Hopefully New Zealand let me stay, and they don't kick me out and ban me. And I hope I don't get killed by a kangaroo, 'cuz I heard that happens out there.

I think I'm pretty regular. I try to keep it pretty regular; I go to sleep early. I don't know what distances me from other rap artists - I haven't met a lot of 'em.

If you're a voice for a community, then you're a voice for something more than yourself. I want to have an impact, because I don't want anybody to have to go through what I went through.

When I was a kid if you didn't have "Lil" in front of your name, you were trash.

The police are very mean people sometimes.

That's something that I've always gotten: a sense of humanity, a sense of awareness of yourself and the world around you.

Hip-hop culture is deeply rooted in the wrong things. Hip-hop is about drugs right now. It's more so about drugs - about selling drugs, about using drugs - it's bad for kids.

I don't think you should criticize people's music because maybe it just isn't for you.

One of my younger homies, he went to jail, and some people came to me and were like, "Bail him out," and I said no. Why would I bail him out? He's going to prison. Let him sit and get some time served. You want to be crazy, but you don't want to go to jail. You want to shoot people, but you don't want to kill people. That's such a misleading thing.

Creating music and just having someone's art directs the way you think about life subconsciously.

School doesn't teach you much. School teaches you how to follow directions, that's what school is for.

I usually just have ideas when I have them.

I'm getting old! My back hurts, I got asthma, I just been listening to Amy Winehouse, trying not to cry. Life's crazy.

I'm a beat hoarder. I'll record five songs in a year and I still hoard beats.

You have to be able to differentiate between the different areas of life. It shows that we're all separate people, we're all different, but we're all the same...