Q-Tip Quotes

Unfortunately, music devolved instead of evolved. The music business got into the hands of lawyers and accountants rather than the entrepreneurial creative people, and that's when the beginning of the end started. It's all based on money instead of art and creativity.

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.

Most of the music you hear on the radio today is developed for making money. It doesn't feel true or honest. You can feel it in the music.

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.

The main trouble with Hollywood is that the guys you have to pitch to, the guys who run the studios, are all business school grads.

I never, ever had it in my mind that I wanted to be in the record industry, because I still contend that the record industry is an insidious affair. It's this terrible collision between art and commerce, and it will always be that way.

Any band that is out there chasing it is doing more destruction to music then someone who is out there playing what they truly feel.

Record companies are not necessarily interested in you realizing your artistic dream. The bottom line is that they got to sell records.

I've never worried about how a new release will be received. I simply try to do the best I can and leave the rest to the gods. The music industry in those terms is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine.

As music became more profitable in the 1990s, it seemed like it attracted a lot of people who were just interested in the financial aspect of it, which is depressing.

A lot of pop music is based on trying to make people remember it so that they'll buy it. To me, it was not about that.

I feel that recording a song already compromises the magical music one can create in the mind, so the fewer people watering down this process the better.

I've been around a long time, and when I was at the top of the hill, I was very ahead of my time! Evidence of that is that my music is still current today - you know, rappers sample it all the time. So, rather than compromise my artistic integrity, I concentrated on movies.

Creatively, I'd like to achieve not only being an artist, but being a businessman and having my own music home.

I remember I heard it in an interview with Michael Jackson one day, saying the art is gone, everybody makes records just to make a record. See, I always want the artist that try to build a whole body of music on one album, so you can enjoy it. So you could say, 'I went with him here, I went with him here.'

A lot that was happening in 2005, 2006, good and bad, the beats reflected it. It was a lot of money around. People was making music to throw money to.

Hollywood used to be run by artists and people who loved artists... people who wanted to make movies for all the right reasons. For the love. The Art. To tell stories. Yes to make money as well, but it was about both. Now I feel, it's mostly about bottom line and making money.

I suppose we'll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn't put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?

As a producer putting up music, I wasn't dropping a project to do this much numbers or make this amount of money, I really just dropped a project for the streets and the culture of music.

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.

I have been skeptical, sometimes, about the importance of rap music, which I think is a capitalistic project to make money.

I certainly understand that we're all trying to make a living, but I'm not thinking about that when I'm making it. And if that's your sole motivation, it's going to reflect that narcissistic greed, and you're going to hear it in the music.

I've never believed in cheapening music by going according to what some people think is public taste.

Well, I am very happy that I was able to play a part in bringing music from the streets onto the radio and into modern culture, I worked very hard and always believed in the sounds I was creating.

I'm making music that I love and I want to hear. At the same time, things like making money, making crazy money - you gotta find ways to reach to everybody but uplift everybody.