Jermaine Dupri Quotes

I've never forgotten a single record I cut or a song I wrote.

I've never gone to a singer with a song and said 'why don't you try this?' or tried to get a record like that. My head just wasn't there.

My mom eventually told me if I wanted to be in the music industry, I should start writing my own songs. At that time, I was in junior high and had no idea where to start - I was writing joke rap songs with friends. Eventually, I wrote my first song in high school, and my mom took me to go record it with one of her band member friends at his house.

I will always really work hard to write as much as I can, but I also love sitting back and waiting on those big Nashville songwriters to send me some great songs, too.

Whenever I have time, I try to get in the studio and write, whether it's for me or other artists or my catalog of music. It's definitely one of my favorite parts of the music industry.

I've just always been around great songwriters. To me, they were the standard.

I just feel like this guy who's visiting the music business over the weekend. Every time I write a song, I feel like it's never going to happen again.

It was actually working with Kendrick Lamar that pushed me further into the act of songwriting, specifically.

I love writing songs for other people, and it's an honor when someone records your songs.

I want to write just as much as Kanye may have for whomever Kanye has written for.

It's amazing to me that songwriting is an actual job.

My first album after 'American Idol' I did with Desmond - we paid for it together, and we literally were together working on it every day for a year and half, just writing. We wrote in New York, Nashville, L.A., Sweden - we wrote with some other amazing songwriters like Diane Warren, too.

I consider myself a songwriter... I guess the business end is my songs and the fun part is playing the guitar.

Being a songwriter, my job is just to write songs for people. I'm not attached to them.

I'd probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they're somewhat biographical - they're fiction but also non-fiction.

I wrote songs with the guys from Air Supply for their record... So I was just writing songs.

I don't really like meetings, I like recording and performing music. I need to set myself up for when the time does come that I need better distribution or just a bigger team behind me.

Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential.

It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.

You know, there's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.

I have been with the record company and Tommy was there doing records with other people.

As long as I'm around the cats in the hip hop scene, they'll throw me a track and I'll write a rap over it.

As a kid, I liked to write, but I didn't think that was a viable career choice. My dream, actually, was to be a white girl rapper and join Salt-N-Pepa - which obviously was a much more viable career choice.

I've been writing songs all along, and since moving to Nashville in the late-'80s, I'd begun writing something like 15-20 songs a year, instead of the typical three or four in previous years.

There's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.