Artist Autonomy Quotes

The world has changed a lot since I started making records.I used to go into a studio and there were songs there, chosen for me to see if I liked them. I wasn't encouraged to write.

There are a lot of global decisions that you can make as a co-publisher, and only publishers can make those kind of decisions. At the same time, there are some things you can do only as a penciler or creator. I want to keep my hands in both pots, so to speak.

We make our own music, and the songs appeal to the public well, and the public likes them.

I get to say 'no' to a lot of things. That, for an artist, is crazy.

One of the central flaws in the state of contemporary music is that the major record companies have failed to incorporate that simple fact into their business plans. They've come into an industry that's based on idiosyncratic artists and tried to erase every idiosyncratic aspect out of it.

I have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world.

My fans are like, 'Lab does what he does,' which is really cool. If I came out with a Jack White rock tune tomorrow, people would be like, 'Yeah, cool man,' which is great.

The thing about being on the majors, from the beginning, going into this, I was like, "I'm not going to be treated like a factory," because that's never the way it was done before. You're talking about a major label, we're talking about serious business; you're not an artist anymore, you're a business, you have to work in terms of product, you have to release a product, and I don't really think that way at all.

I'm not big on collaborations with 'superstars.' It generally doesn't work for me.

I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don't read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2's audience.

Sometimes directors will hire you and say, 'Oh, we love your work.' And then they start to tell you how to do it. I say, 'Hey, man, back off. You hired me to do it. Let me do it.'

I feel like I'm a filmmaker; I don't feel I need to yell action and cut.

It was, 'If you don't do 'The Show Goes On,' your album's not coming out.' I had nothing to do with that record - nothing. I was literally told how I should rap on it. But I'm a bastard, 'cos I'll turn around and put it back in your face.

As a conscious rap artist, you should not want to be in a gangster market. You should be trying to establish your own market, create a place where you can be yourself and make some money and feed your family.

Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.

Taylor is a musician who does things under her own name and tells her own stories-her songs and her albums are her.

I'm fortunate that I've been in this business long enough that I've earned the right to be left alone by my record company.

'TTM' started off being a feature. A producer wanted me to just hop on the beat, like a Diplo type of thing. When I recorded the song, I liked it a lot, and I figured, instead of them paying me to do this, I'd rather just use this for my project, and we can just get money together.

They're hit writers. They're gonna write me a hit whether I wanted it or not you know? I could have put out a single a year ago with the Neptunes and maybe been writing now on top but that was not the path that I chose.

You can't come out on a record dissing the system and be on a label that's connected to the system.

I just think that any person who wants music to be their career shouldn't focus on a record label. I have seen friends who sign to a label too early in their career, and they lost control over their music, and their releases were delayed or never put out.

With my previous record deal, it'd be like, 'OK, so I have this track then, EMI - do you know any singers, maybe? Do you have any singers on your little label there?' And funnily enough, they didn't. But I prefer finding unknown singers myself anyway.

I have a tendency to think that that stereotype of American movies and Hollywood movies doesn't exist. Of course you have the studios that have a very hard policy upon their artists, but then I haven't really been doing any real Hollywood movie yet.

I produce the records. I don't hand over control to some really expensive producer who then talks to the record company and then tries to bend me to their will - for commercial purposes.

I don't think that Dreamworks would have signed me expecting to really mess around with whatever it is I do.