artists quotes

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community.

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

Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show.

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

A lot of artists fail when they try to act, and they flop. So when I get into acting, it’s going to be to do it well, something good, something of quality. I want people to say, ‚Wow, that movie‘ – or that show or whatever – ‚turned out really well.‘

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

When you go on your Twitter or look down your Timeline and it’s all great positivity – I love that. But at the same time, it can really divert you from what your purpose is or what you’re trying to do. And I’ve seen artists get caught up in that.

Some artists and indie musicians see Spotify fairly positively – as a way of getting noticed, of getting your music out there where folks can hear it risk-free.

Sometimes you have the trends that’s not that cool. You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don’t really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after awhile. It’s really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it.

Technology is huge; I wanted to learn about it. People might say that’s odd, but I think it’s odd if artists aren’t interested in the world around them. I’m always chasing that.

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.

All my favorite artists and fashion icons and models are from the Nineties. Everybody was just so fearless.

I’m not interested in people positioning me next to other artists.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

I am really proud that I am one of the artists that has the opportunity to be on magazine covers and to be in the movies.

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

You don’t hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

You know, there are artists who are 35 and up that still make rap and that still works for them. I don’t know if I want to be that guy.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

I think most artists would be happy to have bigger audiences rather than smaller ones. It doesn’t mean that they are going to change their work in order necessarily to get it, but they’re happy if they do get it.

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 artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don’t know any better.

I like to work with artists from around the world. There are so many new inspiring filmmakers.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

I love artists like Prince, who hold on to that element of mystery.

I think it’s really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.

These critics with the illusions they’ve created about artists – it’s like idol worship. They only like people when they’re on their way up… I cannot be on the way up again.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

Archimedes was my ideal. I admired the works of artists, but to my mind, they were only shadows and semblances. The inventor, I thought, gives to the world creations which are palpable, which live and work.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone.