Big Narstie Quotes

My retirement, back in 1976, began as a one-year boycott to challenge the media on that question. I refused to return until the media, and radio stations in particular, got a hold on identifiably Canadian songs.

Even for the people in the business who are real music lovers it's really about putting things in the right boxes, and my style doesn't fit into a box.

I was frustrated in the past, like, 'Wow, why do they have to throw me in the R&B urban adult contemporary lane?' 'Woman' was a no. 1 hit at Urban AC, so there's no disrespect to that lane. But did it get a fair shot at urban radio? No, I don't think so.

I end up pleading my case to alternative programmers - you're telling me that my music is too dark for pop, too pop for alternative, and urban radio won't touch it - so we have a record that doesn't fit in. And what is more alternative than that?

My songs don't play on pop radio; they play on black radio.

I've had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, 'Your music sucks, you don't know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don't know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.'

I think it's always a mistake when you start connecting a band to a personality. You begin to limit what you're able to do.

When I sing a pop song, I'm a pop singer. When I sing a country song, I'm a country singer. I've been very lucky to cross over, because by doing that, you can't be pigeonholed.

The last thing I want to do is just be another voice on country music radio.

I couldn't get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don't always know who you're making that soul connection with.

The music industry is saying, This is the format, and if you'll fit into this format, you can be on radio, and if radio will play you, MTV will expose you, and MTV will expose you, we'll sell records.

But I also think it's up to the fan base to call in the radio stations and demand that the more mature artists be played as well.

I mean, there's plenty of artists who are making R&B music, but because of their ethnicity, it's considered something else.

We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock.

The whole point of 'Acid Rap' was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it's all original music and it's got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What's an 'album' these days, anyways?

I don't know why I keep saying this, and I don't know why I keep using their names... And I'm not dogging them. I'm not slandering them. I'm not saying they are bad musicians. But how can Taylor Swift or Justin Timberlake win for R&B and funk? They are pop singers.

When I hear other artists talk, they talk about 'How come radio's not playing my song?' Well, you have to look at it under a microscope and know that each station is just trying to do what's right for their market, and it's scary for a radio station to add a song that they don't know how well it's gonna do for them.

I'm still looking for the rules of what is and isn't pop music. I'm pop. I mean, of course I am. What isn't pop? There should be a pop amnesty where everyone reclaims it.

What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves.

When I got my record deal at Atlantic, at the time, 'indie' wasn't a style of music: it was a kind of label. And I think, eventually, the bands that ended up on those labels began to be branded as 'indie bands,' and then it became a genre.

I don't think I'm a country artist, really. I'm a country person, but I don't think I'm necessarily a country singer or musician.

One of my biggest fears with 'Coloring Book' was that it would be labeled. I hate labels. I never sought out for people to recognize it as a gospel album.

I don't look at it as mainstream country versus outsider.

Back in the day, if someone at the record label didn't care or like your music, it never got to the public. It just got shelved.

I'm trying to break down preconceptions about what pop music is.