Nipsey Hussle Quotes

Well, since I produce and pay for my own albums, it is the ultimate freedom.

Leaving the record companies tweaked something inside me and I realised I don't have to deal with labels to make something happen. If I want to meet someone, I don't have to go through the label - I'll just go to them. I took my life in my hands and social media has just helped me do that more.

I honestly believe going independent is the future. Social is changing, Spotify is changing, everything is changing.

The big labels have less of a stranglehold on artists and how they record and where they go.

I'm constantly being courted by labels and their backing. Obviously the market is there when you talk about the economics and the numbers, but it's hard to give up the freedom of being able to do whatever you want.

It is hard, though, 'cos record labels love to boss you around. I won't let them do that anymore.

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

That's my favorite subject because it really levels the playing field for artists these days. You don't have to sell out to the record company. You don't have to get a five hundred thousand dollars, or whatever, and pay them back for the rest of your life to record a record.

It's time for artists to take their music back.

I didn't need to borrow money from the record company, because if I had my own publishing company, and I had my own writers, I'd have enough to get and do whatever I wanted to do.

I made my new album 'Colour Me Free!' in a week with my own money.

Creativity is much better when it's free. Someone can take it and sell it if that's what it needs, and from that standpoint, you have to have a label. If you could make your music and just give it away and somehow make a living - that would be the best scenario.

In general, I don't feel artists should need producers.

I think that putting merchandising into the hands of the artist themselves is one of the best things for the artist.

My ambition is we want artists to be able to afford to create the music they want to create, and if it takes them five years to sit down and make the album they want to make, they should be able to afford that. That's my goal.

I'm really excited because Interscope is really focused on artists. They've been working side by side with me creatively and allowing me to make a lot of the creative decisions, which you don't always hear about. That's why I didn't want to sign originally with a major label.

You see artists hailed as a new generation of independents, only to be enlisted to leverage product.

I see hip-hop as going in a self-managing place. It's very culturally controlled and artist-controlled. It's not really based on a label anymore. Everything is pretty much in the control of the artist. Which is amazing.

I don't need my fans to buy my music. My music is free, basically.

Then when I was writing alone, I'd just be in my bedroom in London and I had a little studio setup. I was like, You know what, if no one's gonna produce my music, I'm gonna have to learn how to do it myself.

I think to find an escape route out of a music industry that is becoming more and more focused on making money.

I understand that music is a business, but for people who have control of their stuff, like little Taylor and other artists, I think you'll find them standing up for their music every chance they get.

I think for us, we don't feel like the future of music is in the act of being a record company. We feel like the future of the music business is in empowering artists to have better and better tools to communicate with their fans. We want to be people who are saying to artists, "Look, you don't need that company over there to release your album. You can do it this way." Almost more of a band partnership than a label-artist relationship. Not about ownership of content, but about empowerment.

As a new artist there are so many new ways to put music out there where you don't necessarily need a label because now labels will have their hands in your pocket and leave you with less control.

The rise of the Internet has caused the demise of the record labels, and has destroyed the music business of old, but it's also created new opportunities for young artists.