Ravyn Lenae Quotes

I used to dress like an eight-year-old boy. Traveling has inspired me to be more experimental.

I'm going to make music that reflects me and my life now. So I think people who like my music and who listen to me should appreciate change as well, because I've definitely evolved, and that's a great thing, to celebrate that is what music is all about.

At first you're doing it for yourself, it's about what sounds good to you. It's about expressing yourself. Then you get comfortable as an artist and you find yourself and people get familiar.

People always want to talk about who I was, but I've always been singing, always been experimenting with pop music.

Professionally I've evolved with what's required, but the pictures I do for pleasure haven't changed, except for the cars in the background, the clothing. I haven't changed at all.

When the OutKast sound changed and I started producing my own records, I would mirror what I thought that character doing that music would look like. As the sound got a little wilder, freakier and funkier, so did the clothes. Then when the sound got more sophisticated, the clothes changed again.

Every artist has to grow, and has to challenge themselves with a new form of expression.

Over the years, I was never really driven to become a solo artist, but I was curious to find out who I was as an individual creative person. It's taken some time, but now I feel I've truly paid my dues. I guess I'm at a point now where I'm more comfortable in my own skin.

You know, if Kelly Clarkson wants to do country albums because that's what inspires her, then let her do it. Look at Kanye West or Ludacris... they aren't rappin' and cussin' like they were on their first few albums, so what does that make them? It's all in the eye of the beholder and the listener. We all use our outlet to grow ourself.

In a way, I created Utopia as a platform for me to become more of a guitar player and less of the kind of balladeer that people were taking me for.

It wasn't until Duotones that I felt my true voice come out.

I don't like the idea of a singer-songwriter record. I don't picture myself that way, and it's not my favorite sort of look, I guess. It's really just an aesthetic thing.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they're here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

Music is a vital part of my life, and it has been since I was a kid. It helped me find my identity as a person, it helped me find my identity as an artist, and it helped me get in touch with emotions that I didn't know I had.

I used fashion to express myself as much as I could. But at some point, it was not enough.

It seems to me that in the western world, culture has something to do with appearance. A person that's out creating good stuff has got to appreciate someone when they take the time to have an appearance that goes with what they're doing.

My style is a part of my music. You can't be an artist and not put any thought or effort into the way you appear.

Joanne' is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

I'm now able to show who I am as an artist.

I had been comfortable with the simple 'girl next door' look for a long time. But then, I really wanted to get out of that zone and experiment with my style.

It took me a long time to find my own voice, even after I started making my own music.

When you're young and starting out, a lot of artists think they know exactly who they are. There are others who come out in someone else's skin. They learn to take it off bit-by-bit and work out the core of what they're trying to say.

I never had a problem with genre because a genre actually is like a uniform - you put yourself into a certain uniform. But if you dress up in a police officer's uniform, it doesn't mean that you are an officer; it can mean something else. But this is the starting point, and the best way is to not to fit into this uniform but to make this uniform a part of yourself.

K. Dot was a kid who was trying to find himself in music, finding trends, um, bending towards - ready to bend towards what the industry was telling me to do and after you mature at a certain time in your life, you come into your own...your own niche, your own personality, not only as an artist but as a person.

I became an artist because of the possibility it gave me to develop in another way, because I didn't want to follow the same lines the others around me did. I was educated in the former German Democratic Republic, which meant that an individual figure had to be... like a soldier in the army.