Kanye West Owes Me $300 Quotes

“I would’ve put all my money against the little dweeb in braces and his attempt to make it big rapping. He showed me, and everyone else around him, that he was a mad genius.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“It was 1998, and the Abercrombie scene had just started to fully embrace hip-hop without judgment.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“And in turn, Kanye was treated like the ugly stepchild of Baseline Studios. He was too eager and too dorky, lacking the restraint and tough-guy persona that ruled rap music and, more specifically, New York City, for decades.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“I’m not much of a drinker, so when Mark kept ordering bottles of Cristal for our table—and I kept drinking direct from them like I was Damon Dash on a yacht in an old Jay Z video—I shouldn’t have been surprised when I blacked out.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“Nonetheless, it’s obvious that Mark McGrath, in another life, would’ve made a great politician.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“It started as constantly seeing the tombstones of my still living grandparents when trying to fall sleep at eleven years old and hasn’t really let up since. Sounds super chill, right?”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“also ask DJ AM to bump the song at Las Palmas. He did throw it into the mix days after I recorded it, mostly because it was the first time anyone had ever said his name on a rap song, something he reminded me of just days before he passed away.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“An easy way to see the difference between that style and ours is to listen to a Marky Mark interview, then compare it to an interview with Mark Wahlberg. Or listen to an Iggy Azalea song, then imagine the voice she uses when she gets pulled over by cops.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“Yet I had come this far, still looking like Milhouse and sounding like Kermit the Frog.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“At our next show, my mom came out as “Ma Rule,” holding a bottle of Cristal, sporting a dookie chain, and wearing a Ruff Ryders jumpsuit. No one can ever question this woman’s love for her son.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“A shot-in-the-dark phone call to a dumb rap contest, from a suburbanite who once sharted in sixth-grade PE and as a result had his mom pick him up from the nurse’s office, had turned into a song dope enough to play on LA radio.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“(Some competitions would offer a few hundred dollars as prize money, but it’s not like So So Def Records set up a booth at USC’s job fair seeking “sick lyricists.”)”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“Jeep Cherokees driving down fraternity row were no longer just playing Dave Matthews Band’s Crash; they also blasted The Lox, even if they had to turn it down at stoplights.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“I assumed that with puberty my classmates might also gain a tolerance for other people’s interests, or at least notice the revolutionary work taking place in the rap world during an era now widely considered its golden age. I was wrong.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“I told him I wrote the song alone and I’d never let anyone touch my lyrics. Ever. Donald looked at me with a genuine need for an answer and asked, “Who the fuck are you, kid?”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“The MC must have seen my attention to detail, because he feverishly ran over to ask if I could do it into the microphone. I said sure, both because I was in the zone and because I didn’t understand how to avoid being bullied.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“But no matter what they said, I confidently wore my baggy JNCOs and that one T-shirt with Bugs Bunny and the Tasmanian Devil wearing their clothes backwards without a care in the world.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“In the early ’90s, as I approached my thirteenth birthday and bar/bat mitzvahs became a weekly occurrence, I knew I was in for some real Great Gatsby shit.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“And even though they would still need to be closely observed for the rest of my life, the doctor thought they might even be juvenile tumors that had stopped developing in the 2000s and have no relevance in present day—like Papa Roach.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“Hip-hop was nowhere near the global phenomenon it is today, but to me it’s always been the only music that mattered”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

“I had the time of my life in studios and exclusive clubs, and most of all onstage, but for the past decade my attitude toward Hot Karl, the alter ego I adopted on a whim, has been like that of a stripper who moves five towns away to raise her new child.”
― Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big