Raekwon Quotes

Yeah, the next Wu album should be out by late '95.

Just to be able to release an album back in the day when I came out was very gratifying. Most people were not given the opportunity.

All I can say is that I've had too many people in the hip-hop industry really like what I'm doing. I know where I'm coming from, and the album speaks for itself.

Inside, I've got a real purist desire and dream about the music. I like the idea of being able to carve out a kind of magical, colourful, artistic, inspirational life. And the reality just turns out to be quite different, working with the business to bring this thing you have created into the world.

My main concern is getting out an album that I feel really proud of.

I just made my album. I did my best. And I uploaded the video just to 'YouTube.' That was all.

Very similar experience happened last year when we released this album, North. It was on Deutsche Grammophon, it was very, very honest. It was the most honest record I've ever written.

A whole album to one writer - now that would be really interesting.

When I finish an album and I find myself listening to it in the car, because it makes me feel a certain way, that's the time to try to let other people know about it.

Obviously, with your first album, you want to make sure you are really happy with it.

From its conception and that one and only meeting, 'HITNRUN' took about 90 days to prepare its release. If that's what freedom feels like, 'HITNRUN' is what it sounds like.

I know when I've written a good song when I can imagine the video. If I can't imagine the video straight away, I'm not gonna put it on my album.

I believe in full albums, and whatever comes out of those full albums will come.

I set out and I said I wanted to just release music, and I don't care how many people heard it at first. And I just wanted to put records out. I knew that.

Even if it's a song I know isn't gonna do that well, I'm dropping it as a piece of art, so I always want sick visuals to go with it.

As an artist, I don't care about where we are in the charts and all that. The important thing to me is to connect with a creative project.

With 'Pity Party,' it's the first time seeing my vision come to life in front of my face. I'm super happy about it.

I don't think I wrote my first song until I was 25. And then everything I wrote ended up becoming my first album. I put my music online, and from that, things just happened.

I thought I was just going to be a songwriter for other people! And now I get to put out my own music, which is amazing.

My primary goal is to be a solo artist releasing original music.

I know it sounds funny coming from me, 'cause I produced it, but that's one of my favorite bodies of work. That's what 'Beast Mode' was when it came out and still is.

There's still a part of me that thinks I have to write a really good novel. I'm not trying to say I'm not happy with the novels I've written in the past. But it always feels to me like there's another one that I have to write that will really say what I want to say, and really paint this world that I can see hazily in my head.

Cry Baby is just a character in this world that I'm trying to create, and the music videos are really important to me, and I've fought to obviously get all of them approved.

A lot of people have that story that they used to sell crack or shoot people; that's nothing new. But honestly, if that was me, I probably still wouldn't be doing that because it's so many people that's doing that. It just gets old when you hear a million raps about how many ways I could shoot you. So I just try to be more creative and come with something new because I actually care about the music.

Art is the need to create; but in its essence, immense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and nature is its end.