Janelle Monae Quotes

I'm pushing ahead on my own - you no longer need a large record company to make you a star.

With modeling, you are the client and you give them what they want... with music, it is all about you, people are buying into you as a person.

You don't need a record company to turn you into anything.

It's been awesome going indie. I don't need to be on a major label. I love not having to walk into a specific radio person's office to try to convince someone to play my songs. At the end of the day, it's more work, but I've discovered that I like to get my hands dirty.

Obviously spending my teenage years in music, and in popular music, I wanted to continue this career, but in a way that allows me to dictate it and create it myself as opposed to relying on third party or more corporate decision making.

I always thought that if record companies didn't understand me, fine - I'd go and do it by myself.

I publish my own music. I'm creating my own songbook. It works that way for me; I'm very independent.

You can now be a master of your own destiny. I'm not sure why you would sign up with a record label.

I don't really plan to be a pop star; I just want to be able to make music without the whole My Dad thing hanging over me, which everyone in my position goes through.

I've got more creative control when I do music.

I'm not interested so much in collaboration. You see that from the history of my albums.

I'm just going to go out there, and if people want to put me on the front of their magazine or whatever, that's fine. If they don't, that's fine as well. I'm just going to go out there and make my music.

I never had many problems to do my music and to give it to a record company. Rarely do they try to argue with me about my music, probably because it's still too far-out.

A lot of things encouraged me to start my label. I think it's very important for an artist to know how many records they've sold and where they've sold. I know that I have never been treated the way I'm supposed to be treated - like an artist. That's why I do things for myself. I feel like I'm a free man.

Basically we just created our own label, but again we just did it to document our own music and create our own thing, so the major labels were just always out of our picture, we're not interested.

Putting out my album on my own label has been a great experience for me. It's been very inspiring. It's like a new start for me and having all this creative freedom is so liberating and exciting.

I don't have a record deal, I'm not looking for one, I don't have a manager, I'm not promoting anything.

People talk about the pop part - they don't talk about me being an independent artist. I made it look easy, that's the problem!

If I could have stayed independent from the jump, then, maybe, things would have been different. 'Return of 4Eva' would have been an album instead of a mixtape.

I think if you're able to make the music you want and you can do it in the right kind of context, you don't have to be a circus ringleader to be successful.

My music has always been my solo project.

I mean there are tons of reasons. Well first of all. I write my own record. I don't take other people's materials. And I have a job which is being Willa Ford on top of getting back in the studio and writing and recording.

The reason I never wanted to sign with a big label was because I didn't want no one telling me how to make my music.

I've never worried about how a new release will be received. I simply try to do the best I can and leave the rest to the gods. The music industry in those terms is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine.

I love music because you can create a world through your records. I have total control over what I do and what I wear. It's like my own world out of my imagination rather than someone giving me lines.