Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Michael Jackson is the reason why I do music and why I am an entertainer. I am devastated by this great loss, and I will continue to be humbled and inspired by his legacy. My prayers are with his family. Michael will be deeply missed, but never forgotten. He's the greatest, the best ever. No one will ever be better.
I actually started off majoring in computer science, but I knew right away I wasn't going to stay with it. It was because I had this one professor who was the loneliest, saddest man I've ever known. He was a programmer, and I knew that I didn't want to do whatever he did. So after that, I switched to Communications.
Clinical psychology tells us arguably that trauma is the ultimate killer.Memories r not recycled like atoms and particles in quantum physics. they can be lost forever. It’s sort of like my past is an unfinished painting and as the artist of that painting,I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again.
Sometimes I get this gut feeling about people - maybe I sense a hidden agenda or that they care for the money more than the message. I wish that I'd listen to that feeling instead of waiting for the truth to rear its ugly head. I'm a smart girl. I'm loyal. But sometimes I'm too loyal. I'm not loyal enough to myself.
I think that education works up to a certain point... I think unless I wanted to be like a nurse, or a doctor, or something that required that kind of knowledge, then education is fine. But I didn't really know what I wanted to do, so I didn't see the point in spending seven more years of my life studying something.
I didn't have cable television growing up; there were only six channels you could watch then. The only really good channel was channel 10, and they would play 'The Nanny Called Fran' every night for years. I've seen every episode 100 times. I would get my Grandma to make me leopard skin dresses on her sewing machine.
I adored Freddie Mercury and Queen had a hit called Radio Gaga. That's why I love the name. Freddie was unique - one of the biggest personalities in the whole of pop music. He was not only a singer but also a fantastic performer, a man of the theatre and someone who constantly transformed himself. In short: a genius.
I really focus on what my fans will take from it, people living their day-to-day lives. At the end of the day, the music isn't for me; it's for people who are going through their struggles and want to relate to someone who feels the same way they do. I've got to go all-in, expressing myself, right there in the moment.
I always thought that there was something in hip-hop culture that was the misfit of all the musical styles, where they didn't really belong. They're kind of like, 'No, we're a real culture! We're not going anywhere, you can't get rid of us!' I really liked that there was a rebelliousness about it. I connected with that.
I feel that homophobia runs rampant in the music industry, and that artists are allowed to speak openly in a hateful way, in a homophobic way, in a misogynistic way, and the press does not challenge them. And I'm going to be taking a very strong stance against that, and I am an artist who refuses to accept that behavior.
Prince turned experimental music into pop music. 'When Doves Cry,' the whole 'Purple Rain' soundtrack - he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt 'House of Balloons' was.
I felt like everyone was shitting on me, like, "She didn't get that deal with Interscope. She got dropped! She won't get another project!" making it so much worse then any of it really was. I felt like they wanted me to fail and I thought, I'm not going to go anywhere. I'm going to get my glory. I'm going to get my shine.
When I was younger, I thought you had to be in control of your own life. That takes a lot of discipline, hard work and focus. You just can't let it all fall by the wayside. Later on, I learned that God is really in control of everything. But you still have to put your best foot forward and be the best you can possibly be.
I'm way better in person than I am on things like Twitter. I know Twitter is the best and fastest way to connect with fans who really appreciate you but I'm still not cool with it - although I am trying! I try my best but I'm a one-on-one person and I don't want to tell people I'm on the toilet or I just brushed my teeth.
I don't try to hide our relationship with Jay-Z. There's nothing to hide. People see us, but we just don't talk about it, and I think that's absolutely helped us. People give us space and respect us. The minute you start talking about it, that's all people want to talk about. And then the really big rumors start happening.
I think, ever since I started doing well commercially, it's always been like, 'Oh, well, you're only where you are because of your dad, and it must be because of Mark Ronson and Greg Kurstin that you do well.' It's just everyone apart from me is responsible for the songs that I've written selling millions around the world.
My parents were strict. They weren't as strict on me as they were with the others, but my mother didn't want us to get on anyone's nerves... Go to someone else's house and drive their parents crazy. Another thing was they didn't want us to get into a lot of things that a lot of kids - if they're not careful - can slip into.
You grow up inside these neighborhoods and these communities, and you have friends, friends that you love, friends that you grew up with since elementary. And you have their trust, and you have their loyalty. So it brings influence. So no matter how much of a leader I thought I was, I was always under the influence, period.
The Pink Panther is legendary, but a lot of people my age haven't ever seen the original. So, I think it's great to bring it back for my generation, and to expose them to where that theme song which still sounds so modern and that legendary image of a pink cat came from. It's great to be a part of that, because it's history.
The majority of my interactions with police were not good. There were a few good ones who were actually protecting the community. But then you have ones from the Valley. They never met me in their life, but since I'm a kid in basketball shorts and a white T-shirt, they wanna slam me on the hood of the car. Sixteen years old.
My real dream is to have a whole, like, buy a whole piece of land. Imagine, like, a long driveway. Like, a cul de sac-type street, with maybe, like, seven houses. Me be right here. Have my mom be able to be right here. My brother over here. My girl's grandmother and family right here. Friends over there. That's my real dream.
The Summer after high school, when we first met, we make out in your Mustang, to Radiohead, and on my 18th birthday, we got matching tattoes, Used to steal your parents liquor, then climb to the roof, Talk about our future like we had a clue, Never thought I'd wondering I'd be losing you In another life, I would be your belle
If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.
When the whole world has their eyes on you, if you say something that doesn't truly come from your spirit and your soul, or if you wear something that doesn't come from your spirit and your soul, it's an injustice to your position. And so, I'm really myself every single day and I do it because I know my fans would want me to.
'Trilogy' was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn't left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that's probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that's what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.
I absolutely do prefer a dominant guy. I play a very dominant role in my life, in every other aspect of it. And I like to feel like a lady still, at some point. I feel like that's the time when a guy really gets to be a man, and I get to be a woman. And if I'm being a man in the bedroom too, there's nothing really in it for me.
A defining moment in my life was my first actual VMA performance… That was the first time in my head I said I made it. Everybody knows who you are now. At that point everything in my life was flawless… I was just overwhelmed, I was happy, I was successful as an artist. I think I was in cruise control – like a little bit of bliss.
I didn't even have to be a big fan of someone to enjoy hearing them speak. I remember when Nikki Giovanni came - I wasn't really familiar with her. But she said some things I'll never forget. Like, okay, for example, she was talking about the amount of beef that's in the world. There are so many McDonald's, Burger Kings, Wendy's.
I'm the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It's a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don't like - and the fact that it's not reversible.
My fashion is my most prized possession for two reasons: 1) because it is a visualization of all the hard work I've put in to get where I am today; 2) because it is a legend to the encyclopedia of my life. It is exactly what I've aimed to seep into the artistic consciousness of people all over the world - that life is an art form.
I'm not good at many things. But I really like songwriting, and I get a good reaction from it. There's not much that I do that causes a good reaction, so it feels like if I want to have good things happen, then I should do the things I'm good at. I mean, in all seriousness, I left school at 15. I'm unqualified to do anything else.
Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.
I think its funny when people say a female rapper is too sexually charged, maybe the way I do it is a little more in your face but that's because I have to be aggressive and masculine to make it in the industry. If I talk about sex blatantly, when the mainstream media says it metaphorically every day, it's not okay? It's hypocritical.
A lot of my friends they call me 'the therapist'. They come to me looking for advice. I must be doing something right because they keep coming back. But I'm not very good at kind of looking into my own world and trying to pick apart what is really wrong and fix those things. I like to kind of shy away from certain issues and turn away.
I would have never dreamed that my career would be this successful. I grew up in an average home in Barbados, and we didn't live in the best neighborhood. But I was never aware that we were poor; my mom never made us feel that way. She loved me unconditionally. She made us feel anything was possible and instilled in me such confidence.
I saw a spider, I didn't scream 'Cause I can belch the alphabet Just double dog dare me And I chose guitar over ballet And I tape these suckers down 'Cause they just get in my way The way you look at me Is kind of like a little sister You high five your goodbyes And it leaves me nothing but blisters So I don't want to be one of the boys.
If there was some sort of mathematical equation for beauty, I don't know if I would be the algorithm. I've always been OK with that. I'm not a supermodel. That's not what I do. What I do is music. I want my fans to feel the way I do, to know what they have to offer is just as important, more important, than what's happening on the outside.
[Kingston, Jamaica] is the city, it's not a beautiful beach. But at the same time when I go to Jamaica, that's the only place I want to go. It's where the culture is its richest. Or if you have the opportunity, you can go to the North Coast and go to Montego Bay. That's where you get the beauty of the miles of beaches and beautiful resorts.
I was a very quiet, shy child. I grew up in a small town, Louisville, Kentucky, and there weren't too many Hawaiian-Filipino girls, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't look like everyone else and didn't feel I belonged... But these things only build character and make you stronger. It taught me to grow into the woman I was to become.
In my mind, New York was the place where they had the underground rap shows and I could get in on some ciphers and just rap. This whole fantasy world I had created in my head about New York just from listening to the music my whole life, like, I'ma go up there and do that. But when I came up here, there was none of that, that scene was dead.
I'll meet a guy now, and the next thing I know they'll be sweating and their hands will be shaking. And I feel so bad - I don't even know what to say to them. Then there are other guys who come on too strong, and they're just all over you. The nice ones are the ones who are in-between - the ones who aren't scared and who aren't all over you.
Temptation is just the feeling that you're the most independent person on planet Earth. That you know everything. That's something that we all go through as a kid. Now, this lifestyle that I'm in, the same thing exists! But it's 10 times worse, because everything is at my disposal. When you're in the limelight, you can get anything you want.
More education for women. More jobs for women. More equal opportunities for women. More women to be taken seriously. And I think more than anything we wish to be heard and not to be shut down. I think this is a good thing to think about for any community; what is important is that our voices be heard and not swallowed in an abyss of history.
We're in the age of the selfie. It's just encouraging vanity. It's not even representative of anything except how you want people to perceive you. Think of when people are partying and having fun. They're like, "Hey, look at us!" You're obviously not having that much fun because otherwise you wouldn't be stopping to document it. It's stupid.
You never know what's actually going on in a person's life. You don't know what happened to them before you met them...and that's why they are the way they are. But I do think about it whenever I get in contact with my fans. I know this may be the only time they'll ever meet me. I try to take advantage of that moment and be kind and grateful.
Sonnymoon and Quadrants are a couple of bands that really inspire me in terms of the melodics of things and certain tones and just what feels good. It takes me back to the type of music that I grew up on in my household. We played a lot of gangsta rap, but we also played a lot of oldies, and I think that mix is part of what inspires my sound.
I feel like I'm not living a life different than anyone else. You know, I live in a house with 5 kids and a wife, but I also travel on the road with a band of brothers, just doing life. I am a member of a church, but it's almost like it's a little church on our bus. It's about trying to pursue God and stay faithful to Him in this crazy world.
I don't really have any different cravings from the ones that I had before. I've always liked food that is not good for you, and I still do. But I think I've been really good with eating healthy. I think probably the biggest thing is french fries, but that's nothing new. Right now, I'm trying to force myself to drink water with lemon. Bo-ring.
When you're traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I've met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.
I'm gonna do clothes, but stuff that kids can afford. I want to get into the high fashion world very soon, but the stuff I want to start out with is the small stuff, for the kids, that anybody can afford the Nikes, or the Jordans, Or let's say they can't afford the big brand name clothes, so I would make a lower end line but still high-quality.