"I was about 11 when my mother brought me this karaoke machine and I was really into it back then, but about 4 or 5 years ago is when I started printing up my own music, going to the studio and doing my own thing"
About this Quote
There is a whole coming-of-age story packed into Obie Trice framing his origin not as destiny, but as a series of increasingly deliberate choices. The karaoke machine is the perfect first chapter: a consumer toy, family-funded, safe. It places his early fascination with music in a domestic, ordinary setting, which quietly undercuts the myth that artists are born fully formed in some gritty crucible. He starts as a kid playing at performance, not yet in control of anything but the volume.
Then the quote pivots to the real flex: “printing up my own music, going to the studio and doing my own thing.” That’s not just artistic growth; it’s a shift from imitation to authorship, from singing along to manufacturing identity. “Printing up” is a telling phrase - tactile, workmanlike, almost entrepreneurial. It evokes mixtape-era hustle: making physical copies, moving them, building a reputation track by track. In hip-hop, that’s a credibility language all its own, a way of saying you weren’t merely discovered; you built something people had to notice.
The timeline matters, too. He doesn’t romanticize overnight success. The “about 4 or 5 years ago” vagueness reads like lived memory rather than polished branding, suggesting the grind blurs the calendar. Subtext: talent may start in the living room, but legitimacy is earned in the studio, on your own dime, with your own decisions. It’s a modest-sounding sentence that quietly claims agency.
Then the quote pivots to the real flex: “printing up my own music, going to the studio and doing my own thing.” That’s not just artistic growth; it’s a shift from imitation to authorship, from singing along to manufacturing identity. “Printing up” is a telling phrase - tactile, workmanlike, almost entrepreneurial. It evokes mixtape-era hustle: making physical copies, moving them, building a reputation track by track. In hip-hop, that’s a credibility language all its own, a way of saying you weren’t merely discovered; you built something people had to notice.
The timeline matters, too. He doesn’t romanticize overnight success. The “about 4 or 5 years ago” vagueness reads like lived memory rather than polished branding, suggesting the grind blurs the calendar. Subtext: talent may start in the living room, but legitimacy is earned in the studio, on your own dime, with your own decisions. It’s a modest-sounding sentence that quietly claims agency.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|
More Quotes by Obie
Add to List




