Chuck D Quotes

When I was in N.W.A. and didn't get paid all the money I was owed, that's when the business side of showbiz hit me.

I'm the only girl songwriter that fights for a lot of things. I fight for songwriting fees, which record labels want you to shut up about.

One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it?'

Everything about the music industry takes away from you as an artist. They're always wondering what the next thing is: 'What do you have?' It's a very introverted process.

You sign your life away, basically, when you sign a record deal, and if you have a platinum album, then you go back in and renegotiate.

You can be more creative when you're not feeling like a slave. When you're on a record label, they have you like that.

We make sure we have total artistic control with our albums. We were working with Interscope Records, and they had a hard time with us having all the control. So when we signed with Warner Bros., we told them we would be working hands-on with our producer, and they were cool with it.

Well I know I was contracted to Polydor so they couldn't use my name.

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.

I think we have to bottom out. When the studios jump out of the ring, perhaps the artist can get back in.

I guess I've learned that there's really no such thing as a bad label, there is only a bad contract.

The reason I never wanted to sign with a big label was because I didn't want no one telling me how to make my music.

We've managed to have a long career that is still quite vibrant, yet we've never had to kow-tow to record companies who said we weren't commercial enough.

There isn't a single artist out there, I'm sure, who wouldn't take the most perfect record deal. If the right record deal came along, like, the perfect deal, we'd definitely take it.

You don't want the biggest record deal as far as money goes, you just want to make sure that the people at the label really support your band and the music and stuff.

So you have to just be really careful and make sure that when a deal comes along, that it's like the right deal for you... not necessarily the most money, because you have to pay the record label that back in like record sales and stuff.

'Cause I can make more money going in and doing my recordings and selling them through my entities that I have, rather than going to a record co. and them release a record and pay me 5 percent of what they make off it.

I'm singing the music publisher's theme song - it ain't a commercial.

Record companies, I found out, can put out compilations without your permission.

I have never made a cent off a record in my life. I have never recouped enough, and I never sold enough. When people see you have a song on MTV, they think you are doing well - but you know, the way the traditional label deal was set up, it is really hard for an artist, unless they sold a lot, to see anything.

I didn't want to wait around for some business entity to come around and give me money and tell me what to do. We just started releasing records as best we could.

We went into that knowing that we were never going to sell a major record 'cause we didn't sound like these bands, so I just thought this was an opportunity for us to make the kind of records that we wanted and make some money at the same time.

The band cannot sign to another label or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens.

Major labels blow all their money massively and blame it on the band.

I would make far more money if every song were my own, but I don't write to fill up the album with my songs.