Know Yourself

"N**gas are in a state of nothingness, hopelessness, lifelessness

If you're in range I hope you hear this

And try to change this, cause it's disastrous

Who gets the most loot, who gets bust?

Dollar bill y'all, is the god we trust

The days blow by like dust

Even men of steel rust

We're out here acting ridiculous

When, only we can save us

Mentally enslave us, for little or nothing, kill our neighbors

Animalistic, cannibalistic, behavior

Look to the sky for your savior

He won't save ya, he didn't save your forefathers

Why bother, brothers? You must discover

The power of self, know thyself, or find thyself

Hating thyself, killing thyself

While he collects the wealth that you sit back and murder for

Ain't the devil happy"

- Jeru

The importance of this is not to be understated.

In a day and age of such a surplus of knowledge, we gotta stay true. We can frunt on our true self. It is so easy to get swayed when there is so much good information getting thrown out there left and right, it's impossible to dodge. And here's the thing. 90% of it is actually great information, 90% of it works great for 99% of people.

But here's the thing. JUST BECAUSE IT WORKS FOR 99% OF OTHER PEOPLE DOESN'T MEAN IT WORKS FOR YOU. For example, the quantity over quality - "quantity leads to quality" idea is real hot today. It's a great point, quantity does lead to quality, it's a great thing to follow.. for most people.

I just now realized today, I've been following this for too long, completely forgetting how much quality means to me. Putting out work that I think is high quality is incredibly important to me, and for over probably the past month at least, I've been generally focused on quantity. Because it does lead to quality. It's been great not spending way too much time on a single project, I've been able to get way more done. But, it also makes me enjoy my work less. It also gives me an excuse to not go as hard as I can now.

Now I'm not shitting on quantity > quality, it's just not for me. I let all this info go to my head, that I started believing that was the best way, because logically, it kind of is. But for my own personal values, it's a slap in the face. As you may know already, the two things I value the most with this shit are authenticity and greatness. That means exceptional work that is genuinely exceptional. Not just exceptional because I've done it for an exceptional amount of time, but exceptional because I made a genuinely exceptional work of art, I genuinely created it to my best ability. That is what I care about most, that is what fulfills me. No wonder my drive for this shit has been on and off, I've been willingly dissing my values every time I make beats, videos, all of it. Not to say I've been putting out shit work, but rather than making it as good as possible (which I enjoy), I've gotten to the point that the 20% that creates 80% of the results is done and moved on because "quantity creates quality".

I embraced that idea too hard. And it was holding me back, it was making my overall quality worse. Because I was using it as an excuse to not finish something all the way. You get better at the general creation process, but you also become someone who just pumps out "good" work all the time. And that's not what I want. I want to create actually great work, and until I start creating actually great work right now, I'm always going to be creating "good" work in my eyes, just other people will see it as insane. It's a slower road, there's trade-offs to this shit. You gotta know where you stand. You gotta know YOUR values, because even if it seems logical and everyone else is doing it and getting super successful from it to the point that you'd be braindead to still do it your way, your way is still the best way.

So know yourself, fuck the rules