I knew about the music. I got that part but I wanted to know the business, I wanted to know about royalties, how people got paid, producers and stuff like that so I read all those books like twice.
The record business is dangerous to the health of bands and individuals, which is something I'm just now learning. But it's not dangerous in any of the ways people think; it's not that they try to make you compromise your art. That's not the problem.
The main thing is we never dissolved our Gang Starr contract. We are still signed to each other. We never disbanded the group. If Guru really wanted to super-dead it he would have said, 'Yo, I want out.' And I still would have tried to convince him to stay. We are still Gang Starr.
I feel very lucky to get to fly the flag of RCA Records and Sony Music.
I would do a documentary about Jay-Z. Yes, I would.
I have no such ambition of becoming an actor. I want to grow as a musician, singer and songwriter.
Record labels and producers are not looking to change you: they are looking to make a star. And what they might think is a star may not be you.
I even have nephews who make music, my daughter makes music. I don't know what advice to give them these days. It's really a tough industry to break into.
The desire to hit a big home run is dominating the music business.
I basically was in charge of the Jackson 5 - all their creative, when it came down to the studio, and all their musical endeavors.
The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful.
I truly believe, as an institution, most major labels should just die.
All my life, I've really enjoyed music: making music, playing it, and recording it. It's such a relief and a joy to do what I do for a living.
When I lost my record deal, and my phone wasn't ringing, I realized that I had to reassess who Vesta was and figure out what was going wrong. I knew it wasn't my singing ability. So it had to be that I was expendable because I didn't have the right look.
When I was signed, that was before the punk thing even happened.
I hate that sense of entitlement or the sense of business crawling into playing music.
One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it?'
I began working as an assistant since the age of 16 with my father Dabboo Malik, went on to work with composers like Amar Mohile, Salim-Sulaiman, Pritam Da, and Sandeep Chowta.
It might crush a lot of people, but I've never been in the room with an artist that I've written a song for.
I have been working and composing music since 1986. Over the years, I have seen our music industry go through all kinds of transformation.
I always knew I wanted to work in music. There was no plan B.
When Def Jam wanted to sign Method Man, they wanted to sign Method Man and Old Dirty. And Old Dirty wanted to be on Def Jam - everybody, that was like the dream label. But if I had Old Dirty and Method Man on Def Jam, that's two key pieces going in the same direction, whereas there's other labels that needed to be infiltrated.
Lots of people, from what I can see, just want to get into the music business for the glamour of it. But there isn't any, really. It's so up and down this industry, but if you really love it, nothing can stop you.
I had to put me foot down with the first record company. It was about 1975, when singers were being given names like Gary Glitter and Alvin Stardust, so they wanted to call me Benny Santini just because me dad's an Irish-Italian with an ice-cream business!
I always thought that if record companies didn't understand me, fine - I'd go and do it by myself.
