Jay-Z Quotes

For us, the pressure comes from internal matter of having recorded eight records.

If you're only making an album every 10 years, it better be good.

I think too many artists from my era tend to just stamp out a record.

Each time I've gone to the studio, the songs have got better and I've got more confident.

Every leading lady I work with, I'll see if I can get a song out of them and put it on an album.

Songs like 'Outfit' and 'Decoration Day' and 'Dress Blues,' those were good songs, but the output wasn't as consistent in those days.

I had my whole life to write a bunch of crappy songs and then play them in front of people and think, 'All right, that one out of these seven is really good; it's a keeper.' But on this second album, to be honest, I probably wrote about 50 songs where I was just trying to write a hit.

It's always been difficult to make a good record.

I had written or cowritten eight of the ten songs on 'Beauty and the Beat,' and I had written our biggest hit, 'We Got the Beat.' How was I going to top all of that?

I think it's down to our songs - we've always made sure every song on every album works.

I used to never feel pressure to be creative; it's always just been a fun thing. And then suddenly, it's my job, and people are asking, 'Where's the record?'

It's difficult as an artist sometimes. There's a lot of pressure when it's your first album. You want to make something that's meaningful and timeless, not something that's trendy.

Here's the deal: You can't go in with the intent that, 'All right, we're gonna write another 'Free Bird' or 'What's Your Name.'' You can't think about it in those terms, because you'll never outdo your history.

After the first album, I felt like I needed to one up myself - get even bigger features - and I spent six months thinking about that and not making any music.

It's easy for me to write songs but hard for me to write an album; that's been my experience.

I think it's exciting because it pushes you harder to write a great song. Even for established artists, it has to be really good now because people have so many other options.

I think I see a lot of artists struggling to make their first album perfect, and I've been there.

There's nothing harder than making a mellow, clean record. It's really scary. I can see why people would never want to do it.

I'm not gonna ever announce that I'm going to do an album again. Waking up with that on your head almost doesn't allow you to make the best album you can.

And I had such a great working experience with Paul during the 'RAM' album.

When I make albums, I do a lot of songwriting but not necessarily a whole album.

I just really want to make - to be cliche about it, I want to make pretty music. Like Roy Orbison or Elvis, man. Those guys made beautiful, tender music.

One thing that I've often done under the Projectors is build an album from a central conceit.

I have worked with a lot of people, all very different creatives, helping me hone my craft and discover myself as an artist and the record I want to make. It's such an amazing process seeing and hearing the tracks that people could eventually be listening to on my debut album!

No matter what, if you write a song that's great that everyone expects to be a hit, then everyone's going to be expecting another one from you. If you write a song that no one notices, you're going to want to write one that someone will.