I like getting my own thoughts out right now, I have fans to solidify, so that's why I don't do tracks with too many younger rappers or newer artists. People may consider me to be a music snob or whatever, but I like to preserve what's mine and I also don't just do tracks to do tracks, I make every song with a purpose.
The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea, and I can pretty much execute it.
Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life's artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.
I think I've been lucky enough not to have to do movie after movie after movie for financial reasons, so I've been able to live life and also make movies. I didn't have to grind them out. I could go long periods where I was living life rather than tripping over cables.
I basically was in charge of the Jackson 5 - all their creative, when it came down to the studio, and all their musical endeavors.
Following the example of Bruce Springsteen or Bob Seger, I wanted to have a band, a sound and a personality, yet maintain a singular position of being able to control and motivate the flow of things.
Directing is a constant test of your communicative powers. You're constantly trying to explain people your vision of what you want and steer these tiny little details into a cohesive thing.
Everything I've ever written, I had a very distinct vision of what I wanted it to look like. But, other directors never do it that way.
The beauty of having a producer is that you have someone who says, You're finished.
Bigger-budgeted films have more restrictions and less freedom to create. Because of this, I try to find freedom in the people I work with. I often work in ways I don't want to. It's more about controlling the situation. Lower-budget films are freer.
I'm very comfortable singing myself, first of all. Secondly, there's a certain disconnect when you write the song and you have someone else sing it for you. And it's kind of like a fakeness about it.
I've demanded respect for myself and my band and my peers, I've demanded full artistic control for my music, I advocate for artists and music education wherever I can. And I'm a nice guy.
Directors don't always create, they can also destroy with too many demands.
With a film, you try to keep your vision in it. I think with 'The American' and 'Control' I managed to do that.
After I made 'Oh Carolina' in the 1990s, the record company wanted me to copy that sound, and I refused.
A bonus: You don't have to diet to direct.
No one controlled Frank Sinatra or told him how to sing. No secret group of managers has been telling someone like Jay-Z what to do or how to look. And no one tells me what to do except me and the people who believe in me.
It's really fun to go back and forth from acting projects to directing projects. You don't have as much responsibility when you're acting, but you have more fun. But then you miss having that responsibility, and so you go back and torture yourself and make a movie.
If I had done some of the movies that I was offered as an actor - and very good movies, by the way, and some of them big moneymakers - I don't know that I ever would have taken what was the concentration or the time to do the movies that I produced. 'Reds' is a good example, but 'Shampoo' is also an example, and so was 'Heaven Can Wait.'
Here's the way Static-X has always worked: I write all the songs by myself - totally and completely by myself - I give demos to the other guys, and then they add their parts to it, and then we argue about stuff and compromise and it turns out being Static-X.
I'm really like a rat in the rap game. I just drop stuff when I feel like it.
Acting is one element in a film. Directing is sort of the painter using all of those elements - sound and music and camera and putting it all together. And that can be fun and exciting. If you fail, it's incredibly upsetting - much more upsetting than when you're an actor. But when you succeed it's incredibly, incredibly exciting, so I like the risk of it all.
I'm one of those artists that people take my music without my consent. People love to snatch my music and do things on their own. You got people that put me on beats I never rapped on. I just feel that it's a bad thing.
I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars.
Spike Lee is a master of tone, so basically, if he wants to do something, he should do it, and Imma listen.
