Quotes About Artists

Artists are those people who sit at the intersection between the known and unknown, the rational and irrational, coming to terms with some of the confusing histories we, as artists, deal with.

With my previous record deal, it'd be like, 'OK, so I have this track then, EMI - do you know any singers, maybe? Do you have any singers on your little label there?' And funnily enough, they didn't. But I prefer finding unknown singers myself anyway.

There are so many great artists and most of them are women, but that's good - the more the merrier!

There was a great sense of community mainly among the women artists at the time because we felt left out. I still know most of the women that I knew then, the ones that are still alive.

My favorite actresses were Geraldine Paige, Anne Bancroft and Kim Stanley.

Growing up I really loved Mazzy Star, The Cranberries, Fiona Apple, Everything But The Girl. I listened to a lot of really random things too that I would find by myself. I would find Minnie Riperton albums that I would fall in love with, also, a lot of old country records.

We showed the industry that female artists could attract the same audiences as the big male stars.

The only people playing the roles of classic rock stars are hip-hop artists, now. Kanye's stage persona, and the way he approaches making albums, and the way he wants to be better than everyone else? That's reminiscent of Freddie Mercury. That's reminiscent of the Beatles.

I have been influenced by many different artists at many different stages of my life. Starting out, it was people like Elton John, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and Fiona Apple. As I got older I got deeper into the work of bands like the Beatles, artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Etta James, and Joni Mitchell.

Artists complain about the art world until it starts rubbing their back, then they have their love affair with it.

That is how America gets her art: Contracting firms get the contract and the honor. Starving artists do the work. The government pays for sculpturing thousands of dollars, of which the sculptor gets a hundred or so.

Artists are the monks of the bourgeois state.

I have often heard the statement made by foreign singers, as a demonstrated fact, that the German artists are artists in feeling indeed, and serious in their devotion, but that their singing is crude.

When I hear other artists talk, they talk about 'How come radio's not playing my song?' Well, you have to look at it under a microscope and know that each station is just trying to do what's right for their market, and it's scary for a radio station to add a song that they don't know how well it's gonna do for them.

But I also think it's up to the fan base to call in the radio stations and demand that the more mature artists be played as well.

R&B stations don't say 'We have old school artist Ronald Isley in the house.' They say 'We have the legendary Ronald Isley.' But if I come do an interview, they're gonna say 'We have old school rapper Big Daddy Kane in the house.' We belittle ourselves, our music and our culture. It's hard for a lot of legendary artists in hip-hop to overcome.

You may go from the Battery to Harlem, and in our monuments and statues of public men you will see the slavish adherence to Greek and Roman ideals, from which our artists cannot get away.

Delhi has statues and busts of so many politicians. But what about our artistes?

I got caught up in doing records for other artists. I just stayed behind the scenes, and time just kinda passed.

It's such a pleasure hosting 'Indie Hain Hum' season 2. My love for Indie artists and music has grown and shown me a whole new dimension after I stepped in as a host and RJ for this show.

Indeed, counterculture is so commercial and so business-friendly today that a school of urban theorists thrives by instructing municipal authorities on the fine points of luring artists, hipsters, gays, and rock bands to their cities on the ground that where these groups go, corporate offices will follow.

I could almost hear their voices asking, 'Why here, why now?' But of course they could have just as easily been asking, 'Why not here, why not now?' It would not occur to this crowd that there were no special rules involved; it would not occur to them, even though they were a crowd of imaginative artists, that the whole thing was simply a matter of random, purposeless terror that converged upon a particular place at a particular time for no particular reason.

I've always said I can't tell sometimes that people even have an album out until I see them nominated for a Grammy. I think country gets dumped on across the board by the Grammys.

Of all the artists on Death Row, none of them went bankrupt.