Jay-Z Quotes

I'm not interested in anything besides making some good music, helping some artists, being an executive. I'm pretty happy with that.

I know it is common nowadays for artists to start labels but this is a thoroughly constructed vehicle for inspired talent. This is a market that we've been living, breathing and eating for our entire lives - one where a huge void currently exists. Favored Nations is a long-term commitment.

A lot of big labels will just sign bands like a write off.

I always wanted to be a part of a New York-based label, so I've worked really hard to try and network with people that I felt would put me in the right place.

This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.

Artist development is something that I've been passionate about from my days at Uptown and Motown Records.

If you're part of a record company, you're a manufactured product. It doesn't mean that you're not talented.

I want to be the president of Columbia Records, maybe C.E.O. - kind of like L.A. Reid.

There are people who are genetically made to start record labels, and I'm not one of those people. People just have it in their blood and are good at it. Corey Rusk from Touch and Go and Ian MacKaye. These are people who have made their own labels.

I would love to continue working behind the scenes in music - to produce and manage up-and-coming musical talent would be a dream!

I just have so much love for my record label.

If it wasn't for the TLC story, many artists would not have smartened up, and you wouldn't have the Lil Waynes and people with their own labels.

I was with PolyGram; that was the big label that I was with for the longest, like 12 years.

Shoot, there's a committee to tell you everything at a record label. You definitely have to know who you are if you want to look like you at the end of the process. We've all seen people get record contracts, and by the time they're spit out by the machine, we don't even recognize them.

I don't have the desire to just keep every record and put it out. That's not what I do. I make records for people; that's why I just continue to be consistent, where a lot of the other top writers, they kind of fell off because they started focusing on their own careers as artists. That's not where my head is at.

I started my own record label.

My record label is treating me like I'm a new artist, which is exciting after all this time.

It is great to have your own label; you can cultivate your own artists... I've worked with pretty much everyone I wanted to.

A lot of very popular mainstream artists are products of record companies and marketing companies, and any time anyone can stand outside of that, that's interesting.

If you want a studio to back you, you want to be doing something that's been done to death!

I am a record executive and I shall be right there in your face with my records.

I'm developing artists for my new record label, my son's band, Intangible, being one of them.

I will be developing artists for my new label. The rest is in God's Hands.

Major labels act as banks in terms of how they produce and release your album. No major label is really good or bad; they just 100 per cent operate as a business, which makes sense... no hard feelings.

I got all these books about, like, what you need to know to enter the entertainment industry. And I remember I sent my music to record labels, and I took these little DVDs and sent them all over the place. And either no one got back to me or they just kept saying, 'You're too different.'