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Quote by Jess Row

“I was relatively isolated from people of color. My parents are too old to be Baby Boomers; they had me later in life. So we didn't listen to any black music at all in the house, not even Ben E. King.”

Quote by Jess Row

Author

Jess Row, born on October 25, 1974, is an American short story writer known for his unique perspective and profound insights into the complexities of modern urban life. more

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“I was raised with opera and very white-bread folk music like The Kingston Trio. That was about as daring as it got. So when I discovered hip-hop as a teenager, at first it made no sense to me at all.”

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“The hip-hop that I really connected with was Public Enemy, KRS-One, Ice Cube, and N.W.A. That late '80s and early '90s era. The beginning of gangster rap and the beginning of politically conscious rap. I had a very immature, adolescent feeling of, "Wow, I can really connect with these people through the stories they're telling in this music."”

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“Hip-hop is mostly what I listen to, other than jazz. I've given up on pop music and indie rock.”

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“The gestures and the swagger and the attitude of black men is imitated everywhere in American culture, but people still find black men intolerable.”

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“Because of all the cosmetic services like skin whitening and hair bleaching, there is a lot that people can do to change their appearance without having actual surgery. It's quite common in Thailand and Korea and Japan.”

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“For me, it's a way to find a fiction within a fiction. To find a way to uncover that blunder within the "lie," because when you look closer, every "lie" - and I say that with quotation marks - can be much more complicated. Because that is what fiction is: it's probably the least important thing in the world. It's rich, but it is put-on, it passes the time. It borrows from the world, but it does not invent it.”

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