Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My advice for anyone who wants to follow in my footsteps: create your own path, hone your talent, be ready to show your talent, and don't doubt yourself.
The creative process of making a movie really turned me on. I'd started getting behind the scenes with a camcorder and VHS tape when making music videos.
I usually don't mind movies that people think go overboard because that's what art is all about. Art is about pushing us and making us examine ourselves.
The Beatles did their best cover work on Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally' and music influenced by Richard, such as Larry Williams's 'Dizzy Miss Lizzie.
I enjoy writing in a lot of different styles, so I pushed to find that vicious place, or that vulnerable place, and let it exist as intensely as I could.
Certainly in the modern age where everything is glossed over, when somebody speaks their mind, the majority of the public go, I'd love to have said that.
What happens when you get a big break and you haven't prepared yourself? That becomes the biggest mistake you've ever made. I see it happen all the time.
With 'Lonely Thug,' I constructed a fantasy character who was very masculine and strong and almost threatening, but his demeanor belied some complication.
The best bands kept making records and had this evolution, where by the end, by their commercial phase or sellout phase, the records are from outer space.
I've gotten my personal life all the way intact and made sure that it's straight. Without that, you have no foundation. Your building is going to crumble.
Your body is an amazing creation, capable of performing great wonders, but you can destroy that miraculous machine's potential with an overdose of stress.
The Beatles did their best cover work on Little Richard's 'Long Tall Sally' and music influenced by Richard, such as Larry Williams's 'Dizzy Miss Lizzie.'
I know perfection is one thing I will never achieve, but I will always make it my goal because this means I am always giving my all and working to improve
Shanghai set out to take over from Hong Kong and I think it's done that. It's got the most amazing futuristic skyline which rivals and even betters Tokyo.
I'm not going to say that every record I've put out was the greatest record in history, but I'd stand by even the bad ones. Don't make excuses, make hits.
[In making music] it's nice to not have a goal, to not have a set format. It's very liberating to just get out of your comfort zone and be in a new space.
Maybe I bring people into that pop world who don't usually find themselves there because there's not enough stuff for them to get excited about otherwise.
I did like seven songs on Michael Jackson's Invincible album, but I might have done 60 songs to get to those seven. You don't know what's going to happen.
It's just kind of, we do a lot of songs when it's an artist of that magnitude, like Beyoncé. You're not sending her one song; you're sending her 20 ideas.
I'll tell you who doesn't get enough credit, Soulja Boy. He was the first one to do something, post it, yank it down, and sell more records because of it.
Our music is an answer to the early Seventies when artsy people with big egos would do vocal harmonies and play long guitar solos and get called geniuses.
I would rather fall flat on my face than try to just make a quick dollar by making music that fits into the radio format right now. It does nothing for me.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for military families. To have to worry about your loved ones and still try and live a normal life is extremely hard.
There's a lot of potential that goes unused in places like South Central L.A., a lot of brilliant, smart people who just don't have that chance to show it.
People are just really overreacting. It's just feel good music. We at Virgin are in no way promoting sex or whatever these media outlets continue to print.
When the Beatles cut old rock n' roll, they were recording music still in their performing repertoire, and besides, they never thought of the music as old.
I didn't have any role models of artists that were in the same playing field as me - making expensive videos, travelling, marketing and promoting an album.
If you grow up in the suburbs, you hear of people dying of old age, car wrecks, cancer. In the city, it's always people dying of violence or stray bullets.
I always felt that's why people buy records anyhow is because they get that vicarious excitement and thrill that they don't get unless they buy your record.
You got to realise that when I was 20 years old, I had a house, a Mercedes, a Corvette and a million dollars in the bank before I could buy alcohol legally.
The thing is with hip-hop, it has its waves and the waves crash against the beach and the new waves come in. So to stay relevant you have to roll with that.
I think that my "Let's get it done! Let's have fun! Let's make a great movie!" attitude helped. I rarely have problems on my movies with egos and attitudes.
Let their music skill speak for [itself]. If they are producing good tracks and are resonating with their fans, or even gaining new fans, then that's great.
When I went to AI New England in Boston, I used to do my mixtapes, and honestly, if you look back at any of my mixtapes, every single mixtape tells a story.
Beyoncé don't get a lot of leaks. She just has a very tight control. Most of the time, that's generally not the case, but I pretty much follow her direction.
Yeah I'm telling real stories, but if you pick up a documentary on strippers, you're going to want to see some stripping, so we definitely got that in there.
I'm about to start working with a singer I met on my last trip: she'll get international exposure, and I'll have a song out in that market sung in Cantonese.
I really loved crunk. I loved the extreme nature of it, how repetitious it was, and how these basic, angry chants would just be repeated over and over again.
Pop culture says that if a black girl is to be taken seriously, she has to assimilate and be as white as possible, to the point of bleaching her hair blonde.
I get mad if I'm not presented as an actual artist on tour. I don't want to be seen as just some DJ that plays between sets. I have a bigger brand than that.
That's been a huge recurring thing in growing up - allowing two things to exist in the same space even though, instinctively, they might not be designated to.
Making music can get so emotional that, if you don't set limits for yourself, it can push you or the person that you're making music with to a breaking point.
I have a very healthy dose of scepticism towards what identity is and what personas are, maybe because of my life journey. Identity is something so malleable.
Identity politics are becoming less important since culture's being blended into one big thing - I look at kids' Tumblrs and they're all into the same things.
Maybe one day I'll write my rock album so I can use more obscure references and just be weird. If the lyrics are too crazy, though, then it's not pop anymore.
Rap is always evolving. It's easy for the old school to hate the new school, but it's a music that got a little stifled I think, by the Internet a little bit.
I think rap music is brought up, gangster rap in particular, as well as video games, every other thing they try to hang the ills of society on as a scapegoat.
You have to be able to give the people what you want in your way. And that's how you, to me, become a person that they love and not just a fly-by night actor.
I wake up at 5:30, 6 in the morning, but don't head into the office right away. I like to hang out with my wife, talk about things, get some coffee, you know.
Despite a few really bad days we had quite a lot of fun making Low, especially when all the radical ideas were making sense and things were starting to click.