Lauryn Hill Quotes

I am in a business that's built on record sales and reputation and how your single is doing and where your song is on iTunes. But the kind of music that I do comes from my beliefs.

I do respect people's faith, but I don't respect their manipulation of that faith in order to create fear and control.

I didn't want to be told what to do. I don't want to water down my music to fit into their formats. I know what rock and roll is to me, but everything's turning into one big commercial.

On everything I do I'm always taking someone's money, whether it's a movie studio or a record label. Somebody's paying for it, and I'm always respectful of that. But I'm never going to compromise.

Pop music is created by repression - and then the system takes it and makes even more money with it!

Before our albums are released I feel like we still own it, that we have control over our music. But once it's out there in the world it's no longer ours.

The second you feel a political imperative, it destroys your art.

Of course, I want to sell records, and of course I want to get played on radio, but it has to be about making the record that I'm proud of.

The music industry is a matrix that is counter to what is natural and right.

You have to be very careful with the art you create and you put out.

I'm worried a lot of our work day as artists is a producer's creation - not an artist's creation.

I consciously did not want to put a sub-Mr. Bungle band on the map. I don't think the world needs that.

You see there's music and there's the music business - and they're different.

I'm not meant to sit on the couch and not play music. But I never want to feel like I have to put out a record. I don't want to ever make those records.

You can be more creative when you're not feeling like a slave. When you're on a record label, they have you like that.

Honestly, I really can't speak on others, but in a sense, I feel like every artist always has their problems with the industry because we all want to have our creative way.

You know you have made it as an artist when you have the power to say no.

There's been many times when a producer will say, 'I don't think you want to say that.' We were told we shouldn't be so brutally honest about songwriting or radio or the industry.

We want to make music, and we won't become jaded by the business aspect of what we do.

I've demanded respect for myself and my band and my peers, I've demanded full artistic control for my music, I advocate for artists and music education wherever I can. And I'm a nice guy.

It's a great feeling being with a label that respects what I do.

Before the money or anything, number one, it was just to put out real music, real stuff with a passion, real art.

After I made 'Oh Carolina' in the 1990s, the record company wanted me to copy that sound, and I refused.

We make sure we have total artistic control with our albums. We were working with Interscope Records, and they had a hard time with us having all the control. So when we signed with Warner Bros., we told them we would be working hands-on with our producer, and they were cool with it.

I've always had such a high level of respect for Taylor Swift because she writes all of her music.