Talib Kweli Quotes

It's a very smart, progressive bunch, these people that make country music. They're not country hicks sitting behind a desk with a big cigar giving out record deals and driving round in Cadillacs with cattle horns on the front grille: it's a bunch of really wonderful, open-minded, great people down on Music Row that make this music.

If your music is great, you will have fans, not because you have spent time chatting on social media.

You know how it is with drawers and labels in the music business. They don't want anything to be complicated. They just want it simple, as simple as possible.

The great thing about not being American is that you don't assume you know what a Southern accent sounds like, so you have to be specific.

Half the battle is selling music, not singing it. It's the image, not what you sing.

Radio is aimed at the 30-year-old market, so you have to have great music and appeal to get that age group. And you need a record company to believe in you. It's like a bit of the perfect storm.

LA can be a very open and accepting creative environment. But it is important, because there is this odd separation here, it is important to make your kids mindful of other people and other people's plight.

And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your records, at least a little bit. So if you have a great song, it's catchy, and you've got a little bit of help, I think that's all you need. But there hasn't been that in music.

Being a recording artist, selling music, selling concerts out, having a reality show, starting film; it's great, it's beautiful.

The kind of music I'm trying to make is conscious, to make people think and feel and get inspired.

I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music.

We're thrilled to expand our relationship, knowing that with the great team at the Music Group, Word, and Warner Bros., and with their proven record of excellence, we're looking ahead to an even brighter future for Curb.

I went from a playing in a bar on a bar stool for free beer and tip money, where people weren't paying attention to me, to now I've got their attention. It's up to me to what I feed them with my music. It's up to me how I do that. I've put a lot of thought into how great the songs are, and how I want people to perceive me.

I really care about people, and I would need someone to also genuinely value other human beings and want to be connected with people in the world and to know about other cultures. That might not be a high standard for someone else, but for me, it's really important to try and stick to that.

I've had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, 'Your music sucks, you don't know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don't know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.'

We learned pretty early on in this band that you can't have snobbery in music.

I wound up becoming an A&R man at London Records in the 1990s, during the boom of Britpop, the last great gold rush of the music industry. I saw incredible greed and terrible behaviour. I was greedy and terribly behaved.

The great thing is that whether we have faith or not, we are by and large very tolerant of people, whatever their particular view.

The great thing about the Internet is that it allows people to find and consume music.

Pitbull is great with brands. Endorsements with hip-hop artists work because hip-hop artists typically set the most trends... It's every brand's goal to be seen in the mainstream, and hip-hop music has become mainstream music.

Regarding race or gender or sexuality, one of the great things about art and music is that they can provide people with very little else in common with a similar entry point for discussion, but the discussions still need to happen for life to get more interesting.

Technology has given us convenience, but at the same time it's making musicians work harder in that if you really want to make money making music and selling albums, you have to go out there and perform. And hope you sell stuff like merch, and get on YouTube, and all the other ancillary sort of things that go along with that.

To remain relevant though, I think making great records is the key.

YouTube provides a unique opportunity for all musicians to market and promote their music and directly engage their fans.

I always thought of indie-rock as being rock music by bands that were on independent labels, and that's a great thing.