Quotes About Artistry

What I don't do is try to like become whoever I'm rapping with. The people who go get an LL album want to hear LL.

Don't write the book you think publishers want to commission. Plenty of other writers will be doing the same thing.

I've got a lot of energy at my shows, I'm very performative; that gave me the idea, I want to try to translate that into a musical project, having the same energy I have onstage and on my album.

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.

I'm very conscious of developing my singing, technically and stylistically. I want it to become more individual, express more of me. That's my goal. These songs are steps along that way.

I'm not a traditional sonero, at least not in the way they want me to be, I'm an interpreter, and I reach people in a different level.

I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.

I'm doing more than just making songs for the radio. I want it to be a well rounded sounding experience.

I try to not get to the point where one is making wallpaper, or simply painting money. I want to make sure that I am at least trying to weigh myself down, that there's a challenge each time.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I want to try it again and again, and a lot of times my fellow musicians have to hold me back and say, "Nah, I think we got it."

I thought that if I were going into old age I would want to do what [Giuseppe] Verdi did, which is to write extraordinary things, and to really find myself.

I make soul music for hip-hop heads. It's music I'd want to sample if I were a rapper.

I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.

I take no notice of the trends. It has never concerned me at all. My job is to deal with what I want to deal with and reach an audience by doing so.

I guess that's the major difference between '80s-club Madonna and today's Madonna is she can get anyone she wants to show up in the studio for her.

No matter how long what I'm doing here lasts, I want to be a songwriter for the rest of my life. I love it and it's my escape.

I absolutely love what I do, and I want to dance for as long as I can and feel good about what I am putting out there on the stage.

Vinyl is great, I made a lot of vinyl, but I don't want new vinyl that's from digital sources, because that's a rip off.

People always want to talk about who I was, but I've always been singing, always been experimenting with pop music.

I sing 'All Apologies' with my own lyrics. People want to sing along, but then, oops, they realize it's a different story.

Nothing makes me happier than writing a song that I think is good or that I want to play. Writing songs helps me.

I'm so beyond genre, drama, comedies, I just want to do really good, interesting projects.

I've made a career making stuff that nobody sees, so anything that I can do to help make something that people are going to enjoy and want to see over and over again, then I'm there.

A lot of the Beatles albums were very various, and we did it on purpose: We didn't want the next track to sound like the last one.