Kelis Quotes

One of the best things about Kickstarter and crowdfunding and the collapse of the music business is a lot of artists like me have been forced to face our own weird mess about ourselves and what we thought it meant to become musicians.

I came into this music business at 26 years old. I was a fully developed man at that point. At that age, I didn't have anything to prove.

When I left Genesis, I just wanted to be out of the music business. I felt like I was just in the machinery. We knew what we were going to be doing in 18 months or two years ahead. I just did not enjoy that.

The business has changed so much that they're able - we're able these days in the music industry to be able to control our own destiny.

It wasn't so much that I had to leave to make it in the music business as I was curious to be out on my own and sort of explore. I never felt that where I was ever influenced my songwriting.

I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business.

What happens in the music business is that if you step out of your little spot to do something else, the sand falls right into where you stood and you're gone, you're history.

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 never thought of having platinum albums and winning awards. I just wanted to write songs and sing when I started out in the music business.

I feel like once the song is done, you put it out there and if people want to do bizarre remixes, if people want to make strange videos, great. You know, like chaos theory applied to the music business.

I happened to come along in the music business when there was no trend.

The whole point of 'Acid Rap' was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it's all original music and it's got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What's an 'album' these days, anyways?

If I ever feel that acting is just soul-sucking and I don't want to do it anymore, I could stop.

When you're in the music business, every day is the same. If you work 9 to 5, you can't wait for the weekend, but in the music business, you don't know one day from the next. It's always the weekend.

Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I think the ordinary guy has just as much right to say 'This is a good song' as somebody who is in the music business.

I've sort of had an investigatory relationship with being a musician. I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I felt I had had my run - I had done Jane's and I wasn't particularly interested in music anymore.

I worked in an insurance office for six years, and it was there that I just woke up one day and realised there was something massively lacking in my life, and a non-contributory pension and a subsidised canteen could not fill it.

When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.

The problem that I have is with the music business. For some reason it seems almost impossible to get anything, any music, released which includes improvisation or soloing.

Music has become a bigger business, and with that there is more pressure to succeed; I think that it creates a negative pressure for being creative.

I look up to Tegan & Sara, obviously, Adele and Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks. All these artists are strong in their convictions, and they haven't changed who they are for the music business.

I still have a lot to learn - about the business, about music, and about myself. Its exciting.

The music business doesn't interest me anymore.

I'm an indie artist with major distribution, so one foot in the extreme major music business and one foot in the abyss of indie artists.

Mentorship is really important. I really like to talk to people who have been in the music industry much longer than me about artists' block, things I'm struggling with, or the music business. It's really important for artists to have a community. Sometimes you can feel quite isolated.