I can't stand stage mothers. It doesn't work. You definitely feel that with the new generation of pop stars right now they've all managed to work it out for themselves. You have to have confidence in that. When you're young, you know your market better than I will. I love having young people on the show because I can learn from them.
In my music career, I never was interested in working and writing and creating songs based on what kind of rewards I could receive in return - a hit song, per se, is what most contemporary artists have to deal with when they deal with a label.
The record business is changing a lot, and I don't think to the detriment of music - I think, if anything, it's helping music. It's to the detriment of the business in some aspects. In many ways, you might say this is not the time to be going back to the majors, it's the time to be leaving them, which is a good point.
Coldplay doesn't have to stay within a certain genre; they just go where they go.
We've got a lot of love from Chicago, you know we've been selling out big venues in Chicago that other people don't sell out. Our music is something that's a bit different you know from what's being publicized and that's going against everything else coming out in Chicago.
I think what's happenin' is that, with the overflow of music, it's been diluted. There was a time when people would go search out underground records. Now, underground means free, and people don't really care for it. So now artists tend to go more pop and look for the radio.
Creativity is much better when it's free. Someone can take it and sell it if that's what it needs, and from that standpoint, you have to have a label. If you could make your music and just give it away and somehow make a living - that would be the best scenario.
You can always pound out demos and send them to record companies, but most of the successful bands I've seen are the ones that can sustain themselves.
I think there's good music out there. I just think that radio stations don't play it.
The future of cinematography belongs to a new race of young solitaries who will shoot films by putting their last penny into it and not let themselves be taken in by the material routines of the trade.
You'll be fooled if you only get your hip-hop from the mainstream, you know. The things that move people are not just found in the mainstream cultures. And when we talk about hip-hop in general, hip-hop's basically preoccupied with life.
I think people are enticed by indie rap and every time you have a group going against the grain, they're gonna be like, 'Wow, you did it yourself in 2012, that's impressive - how did you do it? What're you doing that's different? And how can I be a part of it?'
I feel like some artists need a record label, and some don't.
I have friends who I consider my peers, who have done amazing work, particularly in the film and television space, who came up as independent artists and who have been - to be brutally honest - much more prolific than I was able to be.
I'm into indie music. I think indie is going to bring back the spirit in music. There was a time when it was all about accommodating the music business, the music was getting tasteless, but the spirit is back.
When I was releasing EPs by myself, I was generating royalties. And when I signed, I thought I'd put those royalties into other artists. And interestingly, streaming is most of the income for those artists.
One of the things that's funniest about the entertainment industry and comedy is that people go 'Oh, you're great, but I don't know what to do with you.' The great thing about the Internet is that nobody has to figure out what to do with you. You can figure out what to do with you, and you can say, 'I made this thing, and I'm going to put it out, and now if people want to come see me and buy things from me they can.'
So, I play in a band. It's a really underground band. Super underground. Very underground. Like, we don't even actually play.
I always have a soft spot in my heart for New York designers and independent designers, people who are doing the fashion equivalent of what I'm trying to do in film.
If you think about rap and how it has become so much easier to record music and release it, and you think about everyone in the world being a 'rapper' these days, it's so much easier. But it's still as hard as ever to break through and truly be successful in this industry.
When I first started, in 2006, it was an exciting time. Independent, cool, weird artists were being successful, and magazines were writing about them, and people were getting played on radio that were, like, really good.
The artists that we grew up listening to was also independent like Master P, like Birdman and Lil Wayne. Those are the people that we wanted to model ourselves after. Throwing on the Cartier frames, the army-style fatigue jackets.
There's no right or wrong way to do things and I think a lot of the SoundCloud rappers with their DIY music are proving that to be true.
You know, the radio never wanted you to speak about anything, so the music is kinda influenced by the hands of the radio which wants to homogenize it and dilute it and sanitize it. And for the most part, nobody's takin' the time to seek out the cats that are still tryin' to talk, so they have a difficult time being heard.
Kickstarter is such an amazing platform, it really is. It's something great for independent artists of all kinds because every musician and every artist needs help to produce the record, make the record. It's like the modern day patronage. It's turning to your direct fan. It's a good motivator too.
