I only get involved with projects as a producer if I feel creatively inspired.
I am a greedy artiste. Wherever I will find good stories, I will do it.
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.
That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.
It's like something happened to you that caused you to do what you do...you heard something somewhere, you felt something about this music that was definitely part of your own vision. That's what the whole thing is like.
Making music is what drives me - not awards, not Internet fame, not even exorbitant amounts of money. My fans call themselves 'Aadeez,' and they are the most loyal lot. I make my music for them. I love them.
When I got into art school, I thought it was paradise. I wanted to be an artist so much that I was really driven and nothing could stop me.
Truth be told, I'm not all that comfortable with celebrity culture. That was always something that baffled me, the obsession over fame. I don't think that's a reason why anyone should get into making music.
It's hard to predict and to say what goes on inside the minds of an artist, but that's what makes them an artist. That sense of creativity. That thing that makes them tick is probably the very thing that pushes them to the extremes that sometimes can cause, you know, fatalities and things that, you know, that end up not being good.
We are born to create, and we can't help it. Why is that? Because God, the great Creator, is in us.
I will never stop making music.
There is no motivation higher than being a good writer.
It's painful to consider anything but writing.
Music is critical in our lives and culture. It's the inspiration that drives us. It's also the window to our souls. It's a reflection as to who we are, what we stand for and where we're going.
If you're in music, you're in music, and if you're in music you just want to keep making records and playing. That's what it's about, isn't it? At least, that's what I always thought it was about, anyway.
Rap - it's a childhood passion. Writing rhymes, it's something that I was doing before rap records even existed. And I will continue to write until I can't write anymore.
I have always wanted to outdo myself, be it films or shows.
Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God.
If you ask anyone in animation, how long they've been into animation, they'll pretty much always tell you that it's since they can remember, and I'm no exception. I've always just loved drawing and loved cartoons.
Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.
There's always pressure, from other people and yourself. If you're happy with the looks you're born with, then what are you going to do your whole life? We keep thinking up new things and finding better ways of doing things because we're not happy with what we're given.
There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake.
What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.”
For me, as a kid desperate to make music, I thought the only way I could do it was to try to be a superstar - which is a fun thing to be, but it can be exhausting and degrading.
Me wanting to be an artist never really faded away. I knew that no matter what else I tried to pursue, my passion was always that.
