Pioneering Artist Quotes

Leger was not only the first artist I ever met but also the first pop artist, and he blew our minds.

I believe I became one of the first singers to be launched via television exposure. I guess I was a new kind of musical stylist for a new kind of media.

I'm mostly concentrating now on continuing to make history in Hip-Hop, making everybody proud of me, I'm not just a rapper now, I'm in history now.

I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It's incredible - Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.

Las Vegas and I both grew up together, and all of a sudden I was doing things that no performer had ever done before.

When Coltrane died, a void appeared in this music that has not been filled yet. He maintained a forward motion in his work and did not look back.

At 99 and after a long stay in a nursing home, the death of legendary photographer Eve Arnold was hardly a surprise - though she may have been just a little annoyed to quit a few months short of 100.

As time goes on, I realize more and more that, beginning in the early 30's, David Smith began setting the precedent for what was to come later for many of us.

In the early '90s, Too Short was like one of the first dudes who kinda discovered Lil Jon. So I always used to see him at concerts and we'd pow wow - a good dude, you know?

The extent of his influence across jazz, across American music, and around the world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone.

You can say what you want to about a rapper in a movie, but look at what Ice Cube has done. Ice Cube has created more opportunities for other actors to get jobs in this business than some actors have.

Before Missy, there was no comparison to what Missy was doing.

When you are known as this cutting-edge composer all the time... it's no longer cutting-edge.

Mose Allison is a beautiful musician.

Little Richard opens his mouth, and out comes liberation.

I was doing the Klaus Schulze noise-kid thing before it became interesting to people.

As a young artist, especially in rap and at that time that I came out, originality was big.

Hank Williams was playing rock-n-roll before rock-n-roll was.

Mort Meskin was a consummate professional, dedicated to his work. A great talent.

I was watching the Nina Simone documentary alone in my room, and I said out loud to myself, 'Why do we not know that this woman is beauty? She is beauty! Why did no one tell me this growing up? Why was her name not next to 'beauty' in the dictionary?'