Brenda Holloway Quotes

The intentions of record companies are not good, from the musician's perspective.

When I was in N.W.A. and didn't get paid all the money I was owed, that's when the business side of showbiz hit me.

To set the record straight for the God knows millionth time, we certainly didn't sign to Atlantic just for the money.

Everything about the music industry takes away from you as an artist. They're always wondering what the next thing is: 'What do you have?' It's a very introverted process.

I'm just saying the producers and people who work on music are getting left out - that's when it starts getting criminal. It's like you're working hard, and you're not receiving. In any other business, people would be standing before Congress. They have antitrust laws against this kind of behavior.

I think in a lot of situations I had got songs stolen from me, or treated badly.

The music business is a place where the artists are all treated like we're working for the people who are working for us. That can obviously be exaggerated when you're a female.

Once you're signed to a label you compromise.

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

I think all the bad blood started when Geffen released a greatest hits package of my solo stuff.

We've been in that situation where you're just so happy to be doing what you love to do that you get taken advantage of.

Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.

Because the pop industry is cruel, if you don't do everything the label wants you to do, it has an army of other people waiting to do it.

Overall, we had about 50 meetings where the brothers would say that I couldn't do any solo records, I couldn't write for other people, I couldn't do this and I couldn't do that. These guys were trying to nail my feet to the ground.

What's scummy about the music industry is that everybody loves you when you're dead.

We got a little waylaid along the way. The whole problem started about 10 years ago with management and legal battles, then still trying to make albums while I was doing all of that.

When a record co. finds a guy now, they want to own everything. They want to own the rights to market that person's particular name. They want a piece of the action all the way through.

Everything Ticketmaster stands for is what we're fighting against. They're just a small cog in a machine where the artist is at the bottom.

The bungle tour is a bit up in the air due to the fact this at we are getting screwed by our overseas label.

Record companies would rather you stay dumb, not even think of it as a business, so they can either rip you off or get you out of the way in five years to make way for the new groups.

So I guess the complete lack of any new developments is what struck me. That and the fact that much of the good we had done for the artists' side of the industry with G.O.D. had been just as quickly undone by the big boys.

The type of contract between players and producers is, I feel, antiquated in form and abstract in concept. We have no privacies which producers cannot invade, they trade us like cattle, boss us like children.

I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros.

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.

I'm like, 'Why aren't artists owning their masters? Why are labels robbing artists dry, and they have to spend all this time on tour to even break even?' Like, what happened? Why are they promoting things that aren't either socially conscious or elevating the human consciousness?