STEVE STOUTE

I felt like I could take the responsibility and make the Nas movement bigger and not keep it confined to the Tri-State area, so to speak. He allowed me to do that. When we were together, we made a lot of noise, and I made him an international star.

The ad business has some of the great artists, but because there are so many, its hard to determine the true gems.

What's successful is when you are good at what you aim to do. And I don't think that Nas has aimed to do anything that he hasn't done. So he is a good businessman.

Hip-hop started as this niche moment, and the values of it, the cultures that it carried on its back; language, clothes, the way you wear your clothes, the items that you consume, all came with the music as an art form. And those things helped transform how people buy, shop, speak, engage.

The diversity of America is a strength of the country, and I don't think that we use that. We don't talk about our strengths. I mean, having so many diverse people in this country from all aspects of all over the world, and we don't use that. I think we should talk about who we are - that melting pot that we've become.

When you grow up in life and you're poor, and because you're an athlete or you got rich overnight in music, unless you have access to financial advice or for the transition or matriculation of that process, then of course, you're going to go broke.

Nas has always been uncomfortable with being famous and accessible. Nas makes music because he loves music, not because he wants the trappings of music, such as fame.

I used to run record companies, and I went to the advertising business at 29 years old.

There's much more money being brought into the advertising and communications business than in the music industry.

I tell young entrepreneurs to use the leader in their industry and as a benchmark as they work to create their own brand. Don't look at what your competition is doing - if you emulate the leader in your industry, you will achieve a higher level of engagement with consumers and make their buying experience richer.

I realized how far-reaching the effect of hip hop was when I walked by a jewelry store named Bling in a small, rural town in France. Hip hop has made a huge impact on urban culture. Yet many brands still don't speak to young people in a tone and manner that's representative of them.

You think Jay-Z is going broke? LeBron is going broke? These guys have figured it out. They came from poor backgrounds, broken homes, and they figured out how to be businessmen. They become new aspirations.

If only love can drive out hate, we have to remember that love is a verb. It requires action.

Music has always been and will always be a strong gateway to connect with consumers in an emotional hot state.

I always felt like the Academy was very late in acknowledging things. I've seen them do it with hip hop when it should have been acknowledged. It was already penetrating mass levels of culture and radio, and yet they wouldn't give it a proper category.

Artists and the traditional record company model are at odds. The music business has notoriously taken from the artist. That shouldn't be the narrative.

At the root of any societal issue is human truth, especially those truths we find hard to confront.

I never want to predict the relationship between music and advertising.

Look at music like gaming. You monetize the game to all the people who are most engaged. I wanted to bring that theory and thinking to music.

When I was working with Reebok, Paul Fineman sent me to see David Stern to try to explain to him, basically, the tanning of America: That all rappers wanted to be basketball players and basketball players wanted to be rappers.

Does the Grammys intentionally use artists for their celebrity, popularity, and cultural appeal when they already know the winners and then program a show against this expectation? Meanwhile, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences hides behind the 'peer' voting system to escape culpability for not even rethinking its approach.

Nas is an artist who writes from his heart.

You don't want to have any disagreements with a friend, you know? Not disagreements that become public record and that you still have to answer questions about 10 years later.

I look at the artists as mini media companies, like if Beyonce is ESPN and Lady Gaga is Discovery.

'Rapper's Delight' came from the TV entertainment show 'Good Times,' but when the times called for a shift in the narrative, artists answered, covering brutal truths in their rhymes that were uncomfortable for society to confront.