Darryl Pinckney Quotes

With my own material, I like maintaining lyric integrity. I like having sophisticated lyrics, and maybe that's not down-the-middle Top 40 pop, but it reflects my style, my life, the way I speak, and the way I tell what's happening with my life emotionally, so in that way, it's authentic to me.

Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art.

The only people who have doubts about the sincerity of my music are people who come to it relatively late, off the back of having seen me in a film. Acting is about being other people, and music is about being myself.

Even the greatest musicians, they only represent themselves. You represent who you are and what your experiences are and what you have in your heart, and it's the same for me. I represent who I am and what I've been through and what I'm bringing to the music.

I think it's really important to make things your own in your voice. I started when I was 23, and in the beginning of my career, there was this expectation of a young designer being edgier, cooler, more downtown. But I was never that person.

I thought that from the moment someone else could do the same as myself, there was no difference between the pictures and they should not be signed. Afterwards I realized it was not so and began to sign my pictures again. Picasso had begun again anyhow.

If I was singing like somebody else, then it was almost like I was expressing myself like somebody else. So it was always a very original thing for me. It's my voice, it's my diary, it's the way I connect with people.

I care about what people think of my heart, my music, my passion.

The most important thing I can say is to make music that moves you. Don't try and chase what's on the radio or what you think people want to hear.

Your own material is your identity, and I think that's what you need to stick to.

Writing can flow out when I'm feeling something strongly, whether that's joy, pain, fear, desire or anything else. The challenge is actually later, in the second or third or 100th draft of the music, when it can be so easy to cover up the original sentiments by making the music more ornate or cloaked.

In any piece of art, the artist pours themselves into it. It becomes a reflection of who they are and what they believe. That's what it has to be. Otherwise it's just a product.

When you listen to my music, you're going to know that you're getting the real me, my real thoughts and feelings... I want people to be like, 'Oh, he's fresh out with his music for it to be this good.'

I think that one of the beautiful things about theatre - and a place like 'Powerhouse' - is that who you are is informing your work. There's actually no separation from that.

I'm just trying to be myself - make music how I make music.

I feel like Prince's artistry inspired me as far as staying true to myself and my artistry and what is important to me in my life and applying, you know, all the things that I ever been through into my music, the same way he kinda did in 'Purple Rain.'

I'm not just making rhymes and making melodies. I'm expressing my true life force, energy.

As an artist, what you do represents who you are. Coming from a genuine, honest place - that's what I'm trying to do.

I just want to be an artist that makes exactly what he feels.

I like artists with a life, where it's not this universal thing anybody could sing. I want them speaking to me in only a way that they can. To me, that's what makes it good.

We don't change with the times because we write from the heart. We don't need to change our image to sell records because that's not why we do this.

I just think I want my work to represent me fully.

There was a time in my career when I felt like I wasn't being true to myself. I was being moulded into an artist I wasn't, and I knew I had to do everything I wanted to do. I think that's an issue a lot of women face, and men do have it easier in a lot of ways.

I would love for my existence as an artist to be completely about my art - not about my social media, or what I do vs what's cool right now, or even whether or not I sound okay in an interview.

The audience will find the artist who matches their interests. If you're not being true to yourself, your audience can't find you, because there's a wall up between who you are and who they're seeing.