Skepta Quotes

Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.

I didn't have any role models of artists that were in the same playing field as me - making expensive videos, travelling, marketing and promoting an album.

Music videos are really expensive, and if I mess it up, it's like, 'Oh, there goes 15,000 dollars,' you know?

For people to mischaracterize my time or ownership of Blackwater as being some great financial bonanza, it was not. It was most definitely not.

In college, I interned at a production company and spent a lot of time on sets. I love music videos and felt I could be experimental and hone my craft in that genre, so I started there.

That ShamWow! commercial was really low budget. That cost us like $20,000 to make.

Shooting a music video sometimes can be a job.

A club like ours loses £8-10m every year to be competitive, and nobody wants to keep a business that is losing money every year.

I'm doing a music video for a group called 'Die Antwoord.' That's fun, but yeah, I'm trying to get a live-action film off the ground, and that could take anywhere from a few months to the rest of my life.

The most difficult thing about music videos is that a lot of young filmmakers come into the medium, and they have so many different ideas, but they need to understand what the musician wants.

I began my career as a recording artist, and eventually I started directing my own music videos.

I still direct my own videos.

When I do music videos, I like to do a take, then see how it looks, so I can correct it.

I've always written the storyboards for the music videos, and it's been hard working with directors trying to get them to understand what I'm thinking.

I want to highlight that Italy, every year, sends 6 billion euros in cash to Brussels. I cannot give these 6 billion euros to Brussels and then let them damage us on the fronts of agriculture, migration, fishing, commerce and finance. Why am I giving 6 billion to receive nothing in return?

If I had to say how much I've paid in fines over my career, I'm sure it's over $500,000, going toward $1 million.

I did a record with Janet Jackson, and it went to the top of the charts, and we had all of these complications, and she couldn't be in the video and couldn't do anything for the record. I went through something similar with Pitbull. I think it works really well for a lot of other artists, but for me, it just doesn't work that well.

We actually make all of our own music videos. Often we come up with the visual concepts at the same time as writing the music.

If a movie crosses budget and becomes a hit, no one cares. They care only when it doesn't do well.

The real cost is always more than just the money you shell out.

'Take It EZ' was actually the first video I ever produced for.

In 2011, I released my first album called 'International Villager.' I had no support, and whatever money I had made, I put it all in the album. I shot the music video for 'Brown Rang' with one lakh dollars. I spent so much money, as I just wanted to put it up on YouTube, as I knew that my market was there, and it became a huge hit.

Some people draw a line between music videos and short films, looking down on music videos as a format, but there's so much potential in music videos.

When we were trying to come up with a concept for our music video for 'The Stage' we basically run through a lot of different ideas, and ultimately, I sat and studied the lyrics that Matt had written - and they really resonated with me.

I usually work in music videos, where we shoot, like, 10 to 12 setups and 60 shots or something.