Raekwon Quotes

I believe that music is about making quality things, making quality art, and no matter who you decide to work with, you and that person have to come up with something special, come up with something that is excellent material, so whoever hears it and reviews it will like it.

My approach is to be part of a band that makes music, not hit songs.

Dealing with those personalities and the people who run this music thing has been most challenging. It's hard to really communicate things to people who run a business yet forget the nature of the business. They only look at the bottom line and the financial return, you know, they forget what it is they're packaging. It's art.

I'm a fan of records you get and you listen to them from beginning to finish - records where everything is there for a purpose. There was never any filler on those records - it was all well planned out.

I knew the second I finished the first record - 'House Of Balloons' - and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

I could have easily doubled my profit and made two records out of 'Among the Leaves', but the songs represented a certain period, and it made sense to get it out there as one piece.

I always want to put out an album when I know what it's going to be about. I don't want to throw in all these random songs and say, 'Okay, that's an album.'

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

I really just tried to make a record full of great songs, which is the goal I always have.

You start to think in terms of making an album that might be greater than the sum of its parts. It's sort of like having a lot of footage and then editing it into something that will make sense to a viewer, you know. Sometimes it might involve even working on an older song that might complete that picture.

Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.

I'm in a very good place to make records. Needing to make money off music is very dangerous.

I would like to do something autobiographical, set to music. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to try.

I think you can have the greatest lyrics in the world and if it doesn't have the best tune in the world it will suck. I mean if the music wasn't important it would just be a poem.

I wasn't interested in writing music that wasn't beautiful for me to listen to.

I want to put my vibe and my feel of music into an album and have people from different places around the world feel that and hear that.

So the thing is to put out music for music's sake.

Well you know, I've been into music my whole life, so to be able to put an album together with some of that music was awesome.

The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn't quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made.

Working on music is the funnest thing for me, and I love it, and I could do it all day, all night.

I still enjoy doing music. I'm not going to stop doing it, and doing it the way that I feel it should be done.

I jump into the process, and the record begins to gel at some point. Then I begin to get a picture of where I'm going. But it's not always something I know on the front-end.

I have absorbed my life now. I am ready for my music to unfold. I know time flies, but before the end of this year, the album will be out. Even if it kills me.

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.

Stevie didn't use the technology to drive the song. He used it to enhance. I use the tools to further my work, I don't use my work to further the tools.