Raheem DeVaughn Quotes

Music is such an intensely personal thing for me, and I knew if I was going to do it, it would be in my own way.

I never do anything to strictly satisfy a fickle, ever-changing commercial world. I do the music I like to play. It's the only way I feel comfortable existing in the industry.

As long as it feels valid to me and feels sincere, I'll do what I do under the moniker of Nine Inch Nails if it's appropriate. I would hate to think I would ever be in a position where I'm faking it to get a paycheck.

You have to focus hard on recording songs that you believe in.

I'm just excited that I get to put out the music I love versus music just for the sake of it.

You look at Michael McDonald and people like that; I think they just tried to write music that was true to themselves. That's our bottom line. Whatever people view us as, I think as long as we try to create good music that will win out in the end.

I try to make my music interesting to me first, then hopefully other people will find it interesting, too.

I don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang.

I have a repertoire of songs that I'm proud of, that I've written for my own band. When I do a cover, something that somebody else has written, I think about it very carefully before I sing that song. I have to really get behind it and understand it and like it. And that's how I pick roles. I don't want to play just anything.

I'm only worried about what I'm doing or how I present music. I just try to do things I want to listen to, and I think that's what everybody else is try doing, too.

I don't want people to just hand me music and be like, 'Here, you sound good on this. Sing it.' I want to be able to say, 'This is me.'

Honestly, I never felt like I wasn't an artist on my own. I always felt like the music I made was mine, whether it was part of a collaboration with people.

I want to release music that I like and feel comfortable with.

We make music that we believe in. That's all it is.

It's very important to me to stay true to who I am as a musician and the songs that I love.

I really believe in not compromising your art. I feel like I've never compromised my art.

On 'Platinum Flame,' I engineered the beats myself, so I produced and engineered them. So this is getting even truer to myself, how I truly feel.

It doesn't matter even if I am slow or fast as long as my films are honest and carries my integrity.

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing - this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

The New Kids took some hits for, you know, not writing their own music. But on a songwriting standpoint, I mean, I'd never written music before when I was in the group, ... Now the music is my music, so it's kind of like my baby, and that was a whole different experience.

I don't feel comfortable making empty music.

Every script I've written and every series I've produced have expressed the things I most deeply believe.

I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.

My approach is to be part of a band that makes music, not hit songs.

The way that I've always gone about making music, the rule of thumb, has just been to make what I love.