Quotes from Jermaine Dupri

I'm very good at separating things, and one of the things that I've always separated is that my business from one artist to the next has nothing to do with each other.

I'm not afraid of taking long walks. A lot of people want to be great, but they want to cheat to get to the greatness. I'm cool with talking the walk around the block to get to where I want to go as opposed to the cheat, because the cheat has flaws.

Things always work when I put my heart into it, and more brands need to do the same thing.

I have the weirdest career in hip-hop, and I say that because I started so young. I started So So Def when I was 17 years old.

'Welcome to Atlanta' was a song I wanted to do on my first album. The idea was for me and Outkast to do it, but I could never come up with a beat for us to do it. Outkast beats and my beats were very different.

We're just welcoming people to our city.

People always ask me how long somebody can last as long as I've been lasting and continue to keep doing it, so I figured that people didn't really know how to do that.

Following in the footsteps of Berry Gordy, I always admire what he did.

Because I was in Atlanta, people didn't realize I'm one of the real forefathers in the game.

I wanted to feel like an artist for once in my life. I wanted to use other producers for respect, to let them know that I listen to other people's music and that I'm just not out here on my own page.

They keep the song as street as it needs to be. It's got a good catchy hook where it can do what it needs to do on the radio, but they keep the song street where it will keep credibility in the hood.

My father was a promoter of Fresh Fest, and they needed an opening act. He got me a slot as a dancer. We tried it out the first time in Atlanta and the crowd went crazy. I was the opening clown.

I go to clubs and if I notice the DJs are playing the records faster, then I'll push the beats a little on the next record I make. A lot of people don't know how to watch out for things like that.

My idol is Quincy Jones.

I'm one of those guys a lot of people watch, imitate, and then make it seem like they were the ones who did it first.

I'm the father that Bow Wow never had.

I stopped writing lyrics down on paper after me and Jay-Z did 'Money In the Bank.' They're something I just hold in my mind.

People know me, and want to know me, as a baller more than anything else.

So So Def has been one of the most successful and consistent labels in the game in the last 10 years.

I was the youngest producer to have a No. 1 record when Kris Kross first came out, and that was a record I held for I don't know how long.

When I came out rapping on my record, a lot of people said, Oh, you just want to be like Puff.

To be mentioned in the same breath as people I admire means everything to me.

All the records I've made have pretty much been big club turntable records. You need to feel the rhythm.

Some people see Jermaine Dupri as a producer, and they don't really know what the songwriting skills are.