MF Doom Quotes

It's basically against the whole idea of what always made rock&roll music interesting to me. I thought it was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expressions of rebellion. It was one channel you could take without havin' to kiss ass, you know? And right now it just seems like they're on a big daisy chain, each kissin' each other's asses.

Rock and roll has become entertainment that just says what the consumer wants to hear. There's no more edge or rebellion that sets it apart from the norm.

There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won't.

The whole 'sell out' word to me is such a tired, tired word.

The '90s was a decade of mundane market-consumer nothingness where there was nothing coming up from the streets; you just had someone in an office deciding what was cool.

Nowadays, the term 'selling out' doesn't exist anymore because everyone is trying to make a living.

In trying to cross over to the mainstream, some people stopped writing what they witnessed.

I can show up at a Goldman Sachs conference wearing a Judas Priest T-shirt - and I have - while everyone else is wearing the same dress.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, 'Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!'

Punk is not dead. Punk will only die when corporations can exploit and mass produce it.

Selling out isn't selling out anymore. It's getting the brass ring.

Ideally, musicians belong outside the Establishment. When they cross that line, it's like something in them has died.

Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.

Over-commercialization and its resulting restrictions and limitations can be very damaging and distorting to the inherent nature of the individual. I did not deliberately abandon my fans, nor did I deliberately abandon any responsibilities.

If you go to Hollywood, you've already sold out.

I've always straddled a weird line - there's a lot of mainstream stuff that I love. At the same, I still feel like an outsider. I'm the outsider who's on the inside.

I've got an overly developed sense of what selling out is, and I of course worry about it too much.

It's very cliched to go, 'You're not punk.' We don't care if we are, and we don't care if we aren't.

Well, the stuff that has become more commercial doesn't have any edge.

If you want to capitulate to what commercial needs are, you can always be commercially valuable, but I'm not interested in being that.

I went to art school in the days when it was what you did if you didn't want to be like everybody else. You wanted to be strange and different, and art school encouraged that. We hated the drama students - they were guys with pipes and cardigans.

Some people just use beautiful things to just shop or to have a tribal feeling - 'Oh, blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Hermes; blah, blah, blah, I'm wearing Saint Laurent; blah-blah blah' - because it's like a need, a tribe, recognition: 'Ahh, my Rolex.' But I run away from anything which is too recognizable - it's my nature.

As soon as street art got popular, I was just like, 'I'm out of here.'

Since I became part of the zeitgeist, I've been called a sellout many times.