Ravyn Lenae Quotes

After touring with David Bowie last year, I was inspired to look at what I wanted to do as an artist, and I realized I wanted to go back to the music I fell in love with when I was eight years old.

Through my films I'm eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don't know if I'm ever going to get there, but I'm slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I'm 85, I'll look back and say, 'All right, that about sums it up.'

Albums are like diaries. You go through phases, technically and emotionally, and they reflect the state that you're in at the time.

Sometimes a song indicates that it wants to be about a certain thing. And then if you write it, you find that it is about something that you've done.

As an artist, you keep learning. You draw out different parts of you.

It is said an artist spends their whole life trying to get to the place where their heart was first opened up. 'Rent' was that place for me.

There's an amazing power that music has, and it definitely had its power over me as a boy. I just saw fit to keep exploring it.

I had no precise plan when I started 'Electronica,' but I think it has been a very positive journey for me.

I started singing because it was a natural evolution in hip-hop to me. Without Prince, I wouldn't have embraced that. I wouldn't have been able to embrace me.

There are people who compose from very young. That is not my case. I went discovering myself.

As someone whose music is connected to his personal growth, I feel an obligation to follow this muse wherever it leads.

My music would be very, very different if I haven't traveled.

I've started to see records as just a snapshot, a portrait of where you were at at that time. And if you're comfortable with that, sometimes it's like an old high school year book picture - it makes you blush a little bit, but you gotta learn to really appreciate each stage of your life and where you're at.

Sometimes for a lot of new artists, they don't have a vision, really, or know what they want to say; it's kind of drawn out for them. But me, because I'm such a transcendental thinker, it's always like a journey and an adventure with each project. It's like going through a different doorway each time.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

My life is at least as intricate as my readers' lives. People say that 'The Artist's Way' changed their lives, but when they talk about 'Floor Sample,' they tell me, 'I was with you all the way.'

In life we try to grow and better ourselves. As an artist, I feel like I've grown tremendously.

It is not about writing those hits again. I am sure I could write them, but it is about the sensibilities.

I came to singing organically.

The first record I spent five years writing and it was an amalgamation of all the things that happened in my life from the time I was fifteen to the time I was twenty.

I went to art school, I think it helped me a great deal because it taught me who I am.

I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.

I think it's natural for an artist to explore as they evolve.

It's a great challenge and a wonderful journey how to figure out how to be an artist and to carve my way.

I hope to be a producer, a musician, a painter, a photographer - I'm going to push myself to do as many things as I can and see where it goes.