George Duke Quotes

With *NSYNC, we shopped our deal for a year in America, sang a capella in everybody's office, then moved to Germany for almost two years and became popular there. A guy representing a rock band came to our show in Budapest, saw 60,000 people get excited for a band from America that nobody in America knew, and told someone at RCA.

I'm just going to tour; that's the best way for people to get to know me. Focusing on the international stuff and breaking in to the States and U.K.

I've literally never seen a crowd react to a band the way they react to the Polysics. Signing them to MySpace Records was an obvious choice. I wanted to be the person to bring this seasoned band to a new culture and audience. I'm really proud of them.

I want to keep the whole 'Lace Up' movement going. I want to take it national and international with a machine, a label.

Having a solo career is a funny thing.

There are three things we need to do for a band. We need to make a great record; we need to get the record played; and we need to find an audience for the live shows.

I just want to get my music out and make sure that it's heard in the right way.

When you don't have a record label and you have been on your own as we have, you can look at all these other ways you can get in touch with other people and get music out there again.

Being a part of exhibitions is not a burden; it's another way for an independent label such as mine to reach a larger audience by exposing them to my whole body of work.

First of all, I think that is true, if you are a musician, particularly on the come, that you do have to end up in one of these musical centers, some way, to be viable, saleable and so on.

I always wanted the world to hear my music, but I didn't know how I was gonna go about it.

It seems that for all of the artists signed to a major, there exists the same amount of artists that are struggling to break through to the surface within the label. I think, ideally, we'd end up with a very well connected competent indie team that will be along with us for the ride, however long that ride may be.

I've always said that if you have songs on the radio and get played, you've got to have a tour to support that.

The music scene is more competitive in the States.

There's timing. And then there's also certain people at the record company who worked incredibly hard and were incredibly enthusiastic about what I was doing.

The problem with working under an outside label is that your music never seems to reach the right people.

I once worked at a record label called London Records. The company was owned by Roger Ames, one of the most successful figures in the British music industry. Roger always placed a value on loafing, on holidays, on not being in the office all the time.

It's about finding great artists and being part of their careers.

I remember when I first came out as an artist, back in 2004 or 2005, the record label used to take me to all the radio stations and just have me sit in, like, their lunchroom or their conference room, and play for the whole staff. Just to introduce them to me so they would play my records.

My first love was basketball, but that wasn't gonna launch me, and I knew I had to get into other things. So me and my friends, we started making mix CDs and going down to South Beach or to the parking lot at Pitbull concerts to spend all night hustling.

If you put out quality music, you're always going to be in a good place.

My passion is music, you know, and music influences culture, influences lifestyle, which leads me to 'Roc-A-Wear'. I was forced to be an entrepreneur, so that led me to be CEO of 'Roc-A-Fella' records, which lead to Def Jam.

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.

Music industry is a very competitive field, and one has to continuously entertain and excite the audience, which is a difficult task.

I ended up performing one time at BET. I performed my record, like, four times, and the crowd was going super crazy. And Busta just happened to be there; he pulled me to the side and asked, 'Are you signed to anybody?' So we went to the studio a few days later, spoke, and then became business partners.