Even though I’m known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.

I can’t deny that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist needs it.

I performed in a bowling alley before while people were still bowling. Cut the check, and I will perform anywhere.

Probably the reason it’s a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you’re getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you’re going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there’s a kind of bundle.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

I think Kenny Chesney or Garth Brooks would be the coolest duet partners. I look up to them so much for their work ethics.

There’s more good music being made now than ever before.

My best country record only sold 200,000 copies.

To not be modest about it, you’ll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I’ve worked with have done their best work by far with me.

I’m a painter in sound.

I signed up to be a musician, I want to perform, I want to sing.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

Because I’m not in a record deal, I don’t have to operate in an album format.

Over the years I’ve met quite a few big rappers. Then it exploded with 50 Cent, and I did a book with him. It’s always a strange meeting of two worlds, it’s very exciting.

To go indie is a thing. But to put an album in the stores, you need a distribution label.

I’m very, very serious – I’m serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.

Streaming is a really big market for me. We’ve been doing great in the streaming market, so it’s not something I want to alienate at all. Streaming counts now. They’re treating artists the way we deserve to be treated.

The great music for so many artists – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones – was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

Pop music can absorb so many peculiar talents, ranging from the completely nonmusical poseur who just uses music as a kind of springboard for a sense of style, to people who just love putting all that complicated stuff together, brick by brick, on their computers, to people like me who like playing conceptual games and being surprised.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

What changed our lives forever was when Malcolm had the idea to sell rock ‚n roll records to trendy customers.

Pop music will never be low brow.

A development deal is where they’re giving you recording time and money to record, but not promising that they’ll put an album out.

Super-envious of the fact that Daft Punk can wear robot helmets and be one of the most famous bands in the world, while also understanding that will never be my situation.

I don’t really believe in the type of pressure that people are wanting to put on the type of music that I make.

We all sort of do want incentives for creative people to still exist at a certain level. You know, maybe rock stars shouldn’t make as much; who knows? But you want as much creativity to take place in the future as took place in the past.

Working with J Balvin has undoubtedly been an unparalleled experience.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

To me, the most important artists in my career are Arcangel and Balvin. Arcangel gave me the push, the respect in the streets.

When it comes to the qualifications that we should demand of our president, to start with, we need someone who will take the job seriously.

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, ‚Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we’ll talk.‘

It must be quite mysterious to some people why I bother to carry on. Because, you know, I don’t sell that many records.

Real art has been… what’s the word? Kidnapped? No, that’s not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‚Is this it? Are we still relevant?‘

I love it when people say things to me in public and want to meet me, because I want to meet them! Early on, my manager told me, ‚If you want to sell 500,000 records, then go out there and meet 500,000 people.‘

I seen a lot of artists be hot for a minute, and then that’s it, and somebody else come in.

Europeans are much more serious than we are in America because they think that a good place to discuss intellectual matters is a beer party.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

Cardi B put a lot of work in.

Partnering with Atlantic Records creates the opportunity to take what we’re doing to the next level, without compromising.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

The stores and the things like that, the business side of things came out at the point when, I’d say probably in the early ’70s, it looked like the year of the singer-songwriter was over, ‚cause music changed in our time and the spotlight was out.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

I want to be like Bruce Springsteen or something, making songs that are relevant.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

Prince turned experimental music into pop music. ‚When Doves Cry,‘ the whole ‚Purple Rain‘ soundtrack – he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt ‚House of Balloons‘ was.

At Sarah Lawrence, I realized that everybody was already what they were going to be. The painters were painting, the writers writing, the dancers dancing. And nobody wore any makeup. The art was uppermost.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he’s no longer God… They’ll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.

I never thought a career as a musician was possible.

I actually met The Game in my hood on Crenshaw and Slauson. I was outside on the block with 20 of my homies. I see the Range Rover, and we all walked up to his car. I handed him my CD.

In 2013, the week before I dropped ‚Crenshaw,‘ ‚Complex‘ wrote an article that said that Nipsey Hussle is one of the top 25 underperforming artists. I was so offended that I responded with my own opinion about these journalists – their point of view is not validated in our culture.

Even before Snapchat, you go back into my career from Day One or interview people that knew me for 25 years, they’re going to tell you I’ve been DJ Khaled my whole life.